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This study focuses on unintended negative consequences of IT, called technostress. Given that employees are recognized as a major information security threat, it makes sense to investigate how technostress resulting from employees' constant interaction with IT influences the likelihood of security incidents. Although past research studied the concept of security-related technostress, the effect of IT use itself on employees’ extra-role activities such as security-related behaviors is unanswered. Thus, this paper aims to provide an understanding of the negative impact of technostress on employee information security policy (ISP) compliance.

Drawing on technostress literature, this research develops a research model that investigates the effect of technostress on employee intention to violate ISPs. It also extends the dimensionality of technostress construct by adding a new dimension called “techno-unreliability” that shows promising results. The authors use online survey data from a sample of 356 employees who have technology-based professions. We apply the structural equation modeling technique to evaluate the proposed research model.

Findings showed that IT use imposes high-level perceptions of a set of technostress creators, which makes users rationalize their ISP violations and engage in non-compliant behaviors. Further analysis of each dimension of technostress showed that techno-complexity, techno-invasion and techno-insecurity account for higher ISP non-compliant behaviors.

This study provides a new understanding of technostress to the context of information security and emphasizes on its negative impact on employee ISP compliance behaviors.

Since the emergence of the Internet in the twentieth century and the rapid growth of different types of information technologies (IT), our lives, either personal or professional, have become digitised. Adoption and diffusion of IT enhance individuals and organisational performance, yet scholars discovered a dual nature of IT in which IT usage may have negative aspects too. First, the inability to cope with IT in a healthy manner creates stress in users, termed technostress. Second, digitisation and adoption of new technologies (e.g. IoT and multi-cloud environments) have increased vulnerabilities to information security (InfoSec) threats. Although organisations utilise counteraction strategies (e.g., security systems, security policies), end-users remain the top source of security incidents. Existing behavioural research has approached technostress and InfoSec independently. However, it is not clear how technology-stressors influence employees’ security-related behaviours. This chapter reviews the interaction effect of these concepts in detail by proposing a conceptual model that explains that technostress is the main reason for employees’ non-compliance with security policies in which users with high-level perceptions of technostress are more likely to violate InfoSec policies. Counteraction strategies to mitigate technostress and security threats are also discussed.