Caring for IT Security: Accountabilities, Moralities, and Oscillations in IT Security Practices

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.