SECURITY AS A MACHINE - STRUGGLING BETWEEN ORDER AND CHAOS

Our intension is to describe the abstract environment and the elements of information security. We bring together the basic concepts and patterns of thought of information security with the Deleuze & Guattari’s concepts of machine and territory. Security can be seen as a value-driven machine that produces security on various levels. Value growth and dominating market logics provides the fuel for the machine. It is comprised of three levels: physical, technical, and social. Change in any of the levels will affect the social agent, for example an employee. In the value-driven process, territories are established. They are safe zones with a certain order and rhythm. Insiders are brought in to the order. While this is done, the social agents within the territory are subjected to the praxis of the security machine that desires to control them completely. Thus, compliance of the subject is sought. Yet, compliance is based upon subject’s relation to the self, ethics of the self, which cannot be reached from the outside. As the body becomes a centre of the struggle, and as value dominates the rationale and reason, ethics of the self stands as a wall between education and policies, forming the most difficult element to control