Examining Shadow-It Employees' Likelihood to Commit Insider Fraud Insights from Guardianship and Target Attractiveness

The rising trend of end-users to bypass the central IT system at the workplace using technologies often unsanctioned by the organizational network policy has challenged the authority to control IT use. This study examines the risks associated with an unauthorized IT Use by employees, integrating opportunity-based constructs of routine activity theory. It attempts to explain why and whether risky activities such as an unauthorized IT (i.e., cloud services, self-made solutions, self -installed devices, and self-acquired personal devices) most commonly referred to as Shadow-IT usage by employees at workplace may actually increase the occurrence of detrimental security behaviors. It primarily assumes that, in current IT-enabled domain, when an employee bypasses IT norms and injunctions in IT usage and possesses IT tools outside the management control, they are more likely to threaten an organization with malicious activity such as insider fraud in the presence of certain situational stimuli. A multi-model analysis in this study suggests that the usage of informal-IT tools heightens the risk of insider fraud, especially when a shadow employee has privileged access to a valued target in the absence of a capable guardian. An internet survey design is adopted to collect empirical data. Quantitative statistical analysis has generated key insights in examining relationships between a shadow employees’ motivation and various situational factors that may allow them an opportunity to commit insider fraud. The statistical findings suggest that latent variable “Value” is not the strong predictor of dependent variable (likelihood of committing insider fraud) while other variables/factors are held constant. The high Value of personal information assets (such as PII) may contribute to target suitability but is NOT associated with the likelihood of Shadow-IT employee to commit Insider Fraud. Shadow-IT employees may not be likely to commit insider fraud when the value of the personally identifiable information “alone” is high. However, he may likely to do so when other variables/factors combine such as access and absence of guardianship. Situational factors such as access and absence of both offline and online guardianship (supervising) may motivate Shadow-IT employees to commit insider fraud. In supplement to the statistical findings, qualitative interpretation of open-ended survey items supported the survey findings. Also, the thematic analysis revealed that personal traits also play a role in motivating an employee to bypass the IT management policy in using IT tools, later contributing in the end motivation to commit insider fraud when and if given access to the information assets.