Workarounds as Means to Identify Insider Threats to Information Systems Security

Workarounds represent deliberate actions of employees in contrast with the prescribed practices and organizations generally perceive them as unwanted processes. Workarounds may lead to information systems (IS) security policy violations, notably when prescribed practices lead employees to face obstacles in accomplishing their daily tasks. Such behavior generates new insider threats to IS security. In this article, we adopt the view that workarounds may enable the identification of new security threats. We propose a conceptual model that illustrates how workarounds generating non-malicious security violations might constitute sources of knowledge about new security threats.