Business Commons^™

Information System Risks And Risk Factors: Are They Mostly About Information Systems?, Susan A. Sherer, Steven Alter

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This article is the second of two whose goal is to advance the discussion of IS risk by addressing limitations of the current IS risk literature. The first article [Alter and Sherer, 2004] presented a general, but broadly adaptable model of system-related risk that addressed the limited usefulness of existing IS risk models for business managers. In this article, we focus on organizing risk factors to make them more useful and meaningful for business managers.

This article shows how the nine elements of the work system framework can be used to organize the hundreds of risk factors in the IS …

A General, But Readily Adaptable Model Of Information System Risk, Steven Alter, Susan A. Sherer

Business Analytics and Information Systems

This article is the first of two whose goal is to advance the discussion of IS risk by addressing limitations of the current IS risk literature. These limitations include:

• inconsistent or unclear definitions of risk,
• limited applicability of risk models,
• frequent omission of the temporal nature of risk, and
• lack of an easily communicated organizing framework for risk factors.

This article presents a general, but broadly adaptable model of system-related risk. The companion article, Volume 14, Article 2[Sherer and Alter, 2004] focuses on IS risk factors and how these factors can be organized.

This article starts by identifying criteria for …