Technology has created ample opportunities for employees to participate in workplace deviance. From sabotage, fraud, vandalism, or simply accessing inappropriate websites at work, workplace deviance is one primary source of data breaches within the workplace. In this week’s readings, (Collins et al, 2011), state the percentage of data breaches from insiders ranged from 29%-48% of total breaches. This represents a large number of breaches coming from within an organization. This could be attributed to workplace deviant behavior resulting from either a disgruntled employee or an uneducated employee who falls victim to phishing scams or a malware attack. Another interesting fact from this article states that of these breaches, 48% were attributed to misuse of network privileges.

According to (Payne, 2018), there is an overlap between white collar crime and cybercrime. While not all characteristics of each type of crime overlap, some of the features of are similar or have similar traits.  Deviance in the workplace can be a starting point for both white collar crime and cybercrime. In this case, these two categories would overlap and fall under the guise of workplace deviance. In this article it is noted that the majority of offenders are male.

Venkatraman et al., (2018) states that over 70% of the Fortune 500 companies now monitor or restrict employees’ access to certain technology and block specific websites. The author goes on to state that while technology is a vital part of any workplace, deviant use of technology has emerged as a critical problem. Technology has created an opportunity for workplace deviance as well as white collar cybercrime. Not all workplace deviance results in cyber crime however, the availability of technology and access to private information offers a white-collar criminal an opportunity to exploit an organization’s secure information. Furthermore, the availability of technology in the workplace is an easy way for either a deviant employee or an innocent employee to jeopardize an organization’s network security.

Collins, J., Khey, D., & Sainato, V. (2011, July). Organizational data breaches 2005-2010: Applying SCP to the Health Care and Education Sectors. Retrieved March 23, 2022, from https://sites.wp.odu.edu/cyse-200/wp-content/uploads/sites/14757/2019/05/collinsetal2011ijcc-module7.pdf

Payne, B. (2018). Criminology, criminal justice, law & society. White Collar Cyber Crime: White Collar Crime, Cyber Crime, or Both, 19(3), 16–32. https://doi.org/10.54555/ccjls Venkatraman, S., M. K. Cheung, C., Lee, Z. W., D. Davis, F., & Venkatesh, V. (2018). The “Darth” side of technology use: An inductively derived typology of Cyberdeviance. Journal of Management Information Systems, 35(4), 1060–1091. https://doi.org/10.1080/07421222.2018.1523531