Caring for IT Security

Abstract

Despite being considered a fundamental issue in the design, use, and appropriation of digital technologies, IT security has found but little attention in CSCW so far. Approaches in Human-Computer Interaction and Software Engineering do not account appropriately for the weave of dispersed practices that it takes to 'do' IT security---practices that involve a heterogeneous set of actors and unfold at diverse sites and across organizational, legal, and professional boundaries. In this paper we propose to conceive of IT security through the lens of care, a notion that we draw from Science and Technology Studies. Caring for IT security requires continuous, often invisible work that relies upon tinkering and experimentation and addresses perennial oscillations between in-/securities. Caring for IT security, then, engages with established accountabilities and cultivates a moral stance that refrains from blaming insecurities upon single actors. We conclude with outlining a caring approach to IT security for CSCW.

Who Cares for Agile Work? In/Visibilized Work Practices and Their Emancipatory Potential

“…She explicitly includes care for both humans and non-humans and points out that care in the sense of "taking care" of sociotechnical assemblages "can be found in every context" ( [24], p. 93). Thus, in line with Puig de la Bellacasa and the few studies on care in technology work such as IT security [33], water infrastructure maintenance [34], and scientific data production [35], we argue for the existence and importance of sociotechnical care within technology development.…”

“…The different skills, competencies, and existences would be treated as all playing an equal role in well-being. Transferring care to the study of emancipation may finally acknowledge the fundamental sharing of all responsibilities within every aspect of life, including knowledge work, and dreams of work that do not standardize and quantify but "forg[es] bonds and attachments" ( [33], p. 16). Hence, attaching care to contexts loaded with power, control, and domination provides new ways of understanding the fragility of universal facts and directs our attention to dynamics of co-living-and working-other than oppression.…”

"Taking Care of a Fruit Tree": Nurturing as a Layer of Concern in Online Community Moderation

“…In our future studies, we will study how specific cases of dissent in MetaFilter are handled by the moderators, and how applying careful moderation may help dissent to constructively shape community norms, particularly in recent discussions on issues of race 9 and ableism 10 within the community. Our future work will consider more deeply in the context of concepts of care in HCI/CSCW [15,18,29]. We intend to use a mixed method approach to investigate how dissent, moderation, and community norms interplay on MetaFilter, and to inform the design of care-oriented tools encouraging constructive dissent building on a notion of care-as-nurture in moderation.…”

“…Within HCI and CSCW the intricacies of care have been analysed, e.g., in the context of maker spaces [29], in learning environments [15], and in IT security [18]. Care provides a useful lens into computer mediated human interactions.…”

Digital Security Narratives in the Time of COVID-19: A Case for Kindness

“…Contrary to popular misconceptions that "acts of care" suggests warm feelings, "do-gooder" behaviour, and subjective, unquantifiable aspects of security, we venture that it can be reconceived and recognised as an essential aspect of system maintenance that should be woven into any framework and policy that sets out principles of digital security. This argument builds on nascent scholarship in this area [5,6].…”