Biblio

Many cybersecurity breaches occur due to users not following security regulations, chief among them regulations pertaining to what might be termed hygiene---including applying software patches to operating systems, updating software applications, and maintaining strong passwords. 

We capture cybersecurity expectations on users as norms. We empirically investigate sanctioning mechanisms in promoting compliance with those norms as well as the detrimental effect of sanctions on the ability of users to complete their work. We do so by developing a game that emulates the decision making of workers in a research lab. 

We find that relative to group sanctions, individual sanctions are more effective in achieving compliance and less detrimental on the ability of users to complete their work.
Our findings have implications for workforce training in cybersecurity.