One of the most challenging problems modern firms face is that their weakest link in maintaining information security is the behavior of employees: clicking on phishing emails, telling friends and family private information, and searching for private information about themselves (Loch, Carr and Warkentin 1992). A survey conducted by the Computer Security Institute reported that the average monetary loss per incident was $288,618 and that 44% of those who responded to the survey reported insider securityrelated abuse, making it the second-most frequently occurring computer security incident (Richardson 2008). This paper uses a questionnaire from Hu, West and Smarandescu (2015) to test for the efficacy of different reward and punishment schemes in preventing insider security-related abuse. Hu et al.'s (2015) scenarios elicit from participants whether they would recommend violating company IT policies. Real monetary payments provide motivation.3 The results indicate that, if a company can detect abuses with some degree of certainty, the best strategy among those tested is to regularly reward individual employees with small rewards for complying with company policy and punish every detected violation. This recommendation contrasts with the existing literature, which focuses almost entirely on punishment for detected security breaches. This focus on punishment is referred to as General Deterrence Theory (Straub Jr 1990). The results in this paper suggest strongly that General Deterrence Theory does not provide an effective strategy for preventing security breaches.

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Purpose Tax Identity Theft involves the illegal use of a potential taxpayer’s identity, usually the social security number, to fraudulently file a tax return and claim a refund. The victim is the real owner of the social security number who will have difficulties getting a tax refund, as the offender has already taken a refund for the year in question. This paper aims to investigate whether the increased use and adoption of electronic tax filing (i.e. E-Filing) technologies has inadvertently resulted in a corresponding growth in Tax Identity Theft. Design/methodology/approach Multiple regressions are used to analyze the data that is extracted from the Identity Theft complaint reports (maintained by the Federal Trade Commission) and the tax filing statistics (retrieved from the Internal Revenue Service). Findings The results indicate that E-Filing can indirectly but significantly increase Tax Identity Theft through the full mediation effects of individual Self-E-Filing and Direct Deposit adoption, after controlling for general Identity Theft, the number of Individual Tax Returns and Total Refunds. Originality/value The authors explore the association between the adoption of tax e-filing technologies and Tax Identity Theft. The findings suggest that the key loopholes in the Tax Identity Theft process are at the Self-E-Filing and the Direct Deposit points. Several practical recommendations for patching these loopholes are provided and discussed.

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