The Relationship Between Situational Crime Prevention Theory and Campus Employee Computer Misuse
Miguel Santiago · 2010
Computer misuse is a leading problem for all industry sectors, including higher education. However, much of the current research related to computer misuse has been conducted in the business sector, leaving higher education a relatively unstudied group. Many theories have been addressed in computer security literature, but only one theory offers a more holistic solution to combating computer misuse, Situational Crime Prevention Theory. Situational Crime Prevention Theory encompasses four categories of countermeasures: countermeasures that Increase the Perceived Effort of the offender, countermeasures that Increase the Perceived Risk of the offender, countermeasures that Reduce the Anticipated Rewards of the offender, and countermeasures that Remove the Excuses to offend. This study endeavored to investigate whether a relationship exists between the categories of countermeasures found in Situational Crime Prevention and the actual number of computer misuse incidents reported by CIO’s of public, four-year colleges and universities. Using a web-accessible, anonymous questionnaire, CIO’s of 442 public, four-year colleges and universities were asked to provide information related to the countermeasures that they have in place at their institutions and the number of