Bureaucracies in information securing: Transitioning from iron cages to iron shields

Abstract

Drawing inspiration from bureaucracy and information security literature, we develop the theory of security bureaucracy—an evolutionary framework that describes how organizations arrive at their information-securing approaches. Within this framework, we describe three general bureaucratic archetypes (i.e., Security Prototype, Security Structure, and Security Superstructure) that emerge from the interplay between control and expertise. We also expound on the phenomenon of security bureaucracy and delineate how organizations can transition from coercive “iron cages” to enabling “iron shields” in information securing. We also use our security establish-enforce-enculturate (3E) evolutionary framework to inform a proposed variance model of security bureaucracy. Our efforts offer significant insights and implications for organizational information security research and practice.