The Order Machine – The Ontology of Information Security

Abstract

Traditionally, information security has been approached in terms of how to achieve the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information. In this paper, we seek to ontologically examine information security by using Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's philosophical concepts of machine, coupling, interruption, and territory. Through these concepts, we conceptualize information security as an order-seeking, connection-based, territorial security machine that attempts to subject and harness other actors-from technical devices and physical barriers to employees and various combinations of these actors-to carry out the security machine's protective tasks. The goal of the security machine is to block or interrupt the chaotic forces of the outside and, thus, to maintain the fragile order of information. However, the process of interrupting the outside requires interruption of the inside as well: users and organizations are interrupted daily by the security machine and its practices. Yet this aspect of information security has remained largely unexamined. We argue that the question of what information security does to its subjects-what its effects are-in the protected system should be examined more thoroughly.

Flow-based Physical Security

“…According to Pieters [7], the philosophical basis of security research has received little attention until now and "the scientific endeavor of security [has] been left largely unexamined" (see also [8]). Most of "the existing research literature on information security is driven by practical aspirations" [8][9].…”

“…Most of "the existing research literature on information security is driven by practical aspirations" [8][9]. The focus is on such questions as how to develop secure information systems and how to prevent abuse of a system, where the main objectives are confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA) [10][11][12].…”

“…Recently, Vuorinen and Tetri [8][9] developed a philosophy of information security that delineates the ontology of information security to provide a theoretical base for understanding how an asset can be secured. Vuorinen and Tetri [9] adopt the concept of a "machine" proposed by philosophers Deleuze and Guattari [13], for whom a machine has a function, which is to produce and interrupt [9].…”

“…"A machine may be defined as a system of interruptions or breaks" [10]. It is "a machine of order, a machine that seeks to exclude noise, impurities" [8]. Using machine as metaphor is a well-established concept: man, woman, city, brain, stars, software, nature, human body, organization, finite element method, tree, internal grammar of a language, world, economy, factory … all have used machine as a metaphor.…”

“…Along the lines of Vuorinen and Tetri [8][9], this paper describes a model of security based on the notion of security as a machine, with the intention of facilitating security design. Here the machine is an abstract apparatus with synchronic order of five states (stages): creation, release, transfer, receipt, and process.…”