Information Technology and Its Security

Special Report: The Ordinary Work of Security
The Preoccupation of Technical Weakness
By Jérôme Denis
English

This article explores the information security policies of firms, with a particular focus on two dimensions: the definition of the risks on which these policies are based, and the socio-technical hybridization that certain prescribers demand. These dimensions reveal a mode of existence of technologies that contrasts sharply with the constructivist models, generally centred on processes of stabilization. Ordinary security policies, which are close to maintenance practices, establish a distributed way of treating technologies, through which instability and vulnerability are taken to be intrinsic properties. Seeking to make technical fragility a collective concern, they can be seen as a 'care of things'?.

Keywords

Go to the article on Cairn-int.info