There are a few ways in which the advent of cybersecurity has created workplace deviance. First, we should define workplace deviance. Workplace deviance, as defined by Oxford Encyclopedia, is “voluntary behavior that violates significant organizational norms and in doing so threatens… an organization…” Workplace deviance is dangerous as an employee who may be less than satisfied and wields a significant amount of power or information could completely turn an organization on its side. Some may think that because it is digital that it may be harder to trace, but sometimes the opposite may as well be true- digital logs can be made without the knowledge to the offending party. Another example is, as explained earlier, an employee who may not be too happy with the actions of colleagues or higher-ups within a company. If the person wields significant power or a significant amount of data in said company, they could jeopardize the confidentiality of that information by either leaking it. A disgruntled employee could act as a back-end for potential attackers to use their credentials to gain access to the company’s system and start an attack from the inside. This would rid the need for attackers to actively try and phish employees for their information. The employee could potentially sell company data for a profit. They would be more predisposed to sell data if bribed as the employee feels animosity towards their company. Another opportunity for workplace deviance created by cybersecurity infrastructure is the opportunity for a disgruntled employee to lock out everyone else from their system. They can delete data from the systems and their relevant backups. Someone who controls this much data should be subject to oversight and perhaps another individual with equal power to authorize the deletion of such data- it should never be left to the devices of one single person. Companies should be careful who they hire as someone who was already predisposed to throwing tantrums or someone who is known to likely double-crosses their colleagues would make terrible hires and possibly open them up for responsibility. Their negligence could be seen as ‘vicarious liability’ as it would definitely fall under the scope of employment .
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