An ethnographic study to assess the enactment of information security culture in a retail store

The behaviour of the employee has the potential to either strengthen or weaken security, and it is therefore vital to foster a culture of security within organizations. The hope is that such a culture will ensure that behaviour becomes more secure over time, essentially reducing security incidents. Organizations attempt to nurture such a culture, mostly by means of educating their employees and having a comprehensive set of regularly-updated security policies. They are required to carry out regular security audits. These are usually in the form of checkbox-type assessments, ascertaining that the organization has all the correct mechanisms in place to maximize security of information.

We carried out an ethnographic investigation into the security culture of a single retail store that is part of a large nationwide organization in the United Kingdom. The study surprisingly revealed poor security culture, despite the organization as a whole seemingly following good practice with respect to education and policy.