The Fortress IS Mentality is the belief within IS departments that they are more important, or at least completely separate to all other people within an organisation. This is caused by several actual or perceived divides between IS and 'everyone else', such as:

-The perception that the IS Department are the only people with any understanding of what they do gives them a perceived free range to act however they wish, as no-one else in the organisation will know if they are wrong.

-The language barrier; the habit of the IS workers to use specialist terms and jargon makes communication with 'outsiders' unnecessarily difficult.

-Physical barriers within the organisation reinforce the feeling of separation, due to the IS offices being physically separated from the majority of the college.

Finally, the differences in goals and objectives should be noted, whilst the majority of the college may be working toward providing more effective education to the students; the IS department may well be focussed solely on looking after their computers, possibly to the detriment of providing a good education.