IT security is commonly considered a fundamental issue in the design, use and appropriation of digital technologies. The workshop we propose proceeds from the observations that existing techno-centric approaches to IT security are lacking and that established notions of usable security limit questions of IT security to relatively narrow concerns for product quality and consumer competency. In contrast, the workshop explores how IT security emerges from a mesh of diverse practices, involving a range of actors such as software developers, security researchers, hackers, users, policy makers, non-profit organizations and so forth. “Taking the practice turn” in IT security, we suggest to study the making of IT security in terms of distributed collaboration, tense negotiation and heterogeneous cooperation across organizational boundaries. IT security, we propose, cannot simply be scripted into technology. Rather, it must be understood as situated within practices of designing, using, and testing through which security is enacted, maintained and contested.
Organized by
Laura Kocksch
NRW-Fortschrittskolleg SecHuman, Ruhr University Bochum
Matthias Korn
Collaborative Research Center 1187: Media of Cooperation, University of Siegen
Andreas Poller
Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT)
Susann Wagenknecht
Department of Social Sciences, University of Siegen
