Watchdog or Guardian? Unpacking the Issues Surrounding the Monitoring of InfoSec Employees

Much work has been conducted on the use of monitoring to improve quality of life (in such domains as the healthcare industry) versus the privacy trade-offs associated with such monitoring. However, little work has been done on the impact of monitoring on employees with information security responsibilities. We present here some initial results from interviews with such professionals, focusing on those who operated in classified environments. In particular, we draw attention to the benefits to being monitored that these employees identified: increased feeling of personal security, the presence of someone to help prevent you from making mistakes, simplifying collaboration in some instances, and the presence of an audit trail for employee protection. We also outline some of the complicating factors that may diminish these benefits. While government monitoring often has a negative connotation, we demonstrate that there are cases when voluntary monitoring as a condition of employment can be seen to have advantages to the employee.