Information Security Commons^™

Collaborative Risk Method For Information Security Management Practices: A Case Context Within Turkey, Bilge Karabacak, Sevgi Ozkan

All Faculty and Staff Scholarship

In this case study, a collaborative risk method for information security management has been analyzed considering the common problems encountered during the implementation of ISO standards in eight Turkish public organizations. This proposed risk method has been applied within different public organizations and it has been demonstrated to be effective and problem-free. The fundamental issue is that there is no legislation that regulates the information security liabilities of the public organizations in Turkey. The findings and lessons learned presented in this case provide useful insights for practitioners when implementing information security management projects in other international public sector organizations.

What Does Security Culture Look Like For Small Organizations?, Patricia A. Williams

Australian Information Security Management Conference

The human component is a significant factor in information security, with a large numbers of breaches occurring due to unintentional user error. Technical solutions can only protect information so far and thus the human aspect of security has become a major focus for discussion. Therefore, it is important for organisations to create a security conscious culture. However, currently there is no established representation of security culture from which to assess how it can be manoeuvred to improve the overall information security of an organization. This is of particular importance for small organizations who lack the resources in information security and …

Ascent Of Asymmetric Risk In Information Security: An Initial Evaluation., Tobias Ruighaver, Matthew Warren, Atif Ahmad

Australian Information Warfare and Security Conference

Dramatic changes in the information security risk landscape over several decades have not yet been matched by similar changes in organizational information security, which is still mainly based on a mindset that security is achieved through extensive preventive controls. As a result, maintenance cost of information security is increasing rapidly, but this increased expenditure has not really made an attack more difficult. The opposite seems to be true, information security attacks have become easier to perpetrate and appear more like information warfare tactics. At the same time, the damage caused by a successful attack has increased significantly and may sometimes …

Improving An Organisations Existing Information Technology Policy To Increase Security, Shane Talbot, Andrew Woodward

Australian Information Security Management Conference

A security policy which includes the appropriate phases of implementation, enforcement, auditing and review is vital to protecting an organisations information security. This paper examined the information security policy of a government organisation in response to a number of perceived shortcomings. The specific issues identified relating to the organisations security policy as a result of this investigation were as follows: a culture of ignoring policies, minimal awareness of policies, minimal policy enforcement, policy updating and review ad hoc at best, policy framework, lengthy policy development and approval process, no compliance program, no formal non-compliance reporting and an apparent inconsistent enforcement …

Exploring The Relationship Between Organizational Culture And Information Security Culture, Joo S. Lim, Shanton Chang, Sean Maynard, Atif Ahmad

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Managing Information Security is becoming more challenging in today’s business because people are both a cause of information security incidents as well as a key part of the protection from them. As the impact of organizational culture (OC) on employees is significant, many researchers have called for the creation of information security culture (ISC) in organizations to influence the actions and behaviour of employees towards better organizational information security. Although researchers have called for the creation of ISC to be embedded in organizations, nonetheless, literature suggests that little past research examining the relationship between the nature of OC and ISC. …

Challenges In Improving Information Security Practice In Australian General Practice, Donald C. Mcdermid, Rachel J. Mahncke, Patricia A. Williams

Australian Information Security Management Conference

The status of information security in Australian medical general practice is discussed together with a review of the challenges facing small practices that often lack the technical knowledge and skill to secure patient information by themselves. It is proposed that an information security governance framework is required to assist practices in identifying weaknesses and gaps and then to plan and implement how to overcome their shortcomings through policies, training and changes to processes and management structure.

Measuring Information Security Governance Within General Medical Practice, Rachel J. Mahncke, Donald C. Mcdermid, Patricia A. Williams

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Information security is becoming increasingly important within the Australian general medical practice environment as legal and accreditation compliance is being enforced. Using a literature review, approaches to measuring information security governance were analysed for their potential suitability and use within General Practice for the effective protection of confidential information. The models, frameworks and guidelines selected were analysed to evaluate if they were Key Performance Indicator (KPI), or process driven; whether the approach taken was strategic, tactical or operational; and if governance or management assessment tools were presented. To measure information security governance, and be both effective and practical, the approach …

Case Study On An Investigation Of Information Security Management Among Law Firms, Sameera Mubarak, Elena Sitnikova

Australian Information Security Management Conference

The integrity of lawyers trust accounts as come under scrutiny in the last few years. There have been many incidents of trust account fraud reported internationally, including a case in Australia, where an employee of a law firm stole $4,500,000 from the trust funds of forty-two clients. Our study involved interviewing principles of ten law companies to find out solicitors’ attitudes to computer security and the possibility of breaches of their trust accounts. An overall finding highlights that law firms were not current with technology to combat computer crime, and inadequate access control was a major concern in safeguarding account …

Cyber Attacks: Does Physical Boundary Matter?, Qiu-Hong Wang, Seung-Hyun Kim

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Information security issues are characterized with interdependence. Particularly, cyber criminals can easily cross national boundaries and exploit jurisdictional limitations between countries. Thus, whether cyber attacks are spatially autocorrelated is a strategic issue for government authorities and a tactic issue for insurance companies. Through an empirical study of cyber attacks across 62 countries during the period 2003-2007, we find little evidence on the spatial autocorrelation of cyber attacks at any week. However, after considering economic opportunity, IT infrastructure, international collaboration in enforcement and conventional crimes, we find strong evidence that cyber attacks were indeed spatially autocorrelated as they moved over time. …

Networks - Ii: Overhead Analysis Of Security Implementation Using Ipsec, Muhammad Awais Azam, Zaka -Ul- Mustafa, Usman Tahir, S. M. Ahsan, Muhammad Adnan Naseem, Imran Rashid, Muhammad Adeel

International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies

Authentication, access control, encryption and auditing make up the essential elements of network security. Researchers have dedicated a large amount of efforts to implement security features that fully incorporate the use of all these elements. Currently, data networks mainly provide authentication and confidentiality services. Confidentiality alone is not able to protect the system, thus, suitable security measures must be taken. However, this security is itself an overhead which must be accounted for. A trade-off must exist between performance and security. This trade-off must be carefully managed so as not to deteriorate the systems being secured. This calls for the true …

Prevention Is Better Than Prosecution: Deepening The Defence Against Cyber Crime, Jacqueline Fick

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

In the paper the author proposes that effectively and efficiently addressing cyber crime requires a shift in paradigm. For businesses and government departments alike the focus should be on prevention, rather than the prosecution of cyber criminals. The Defence in Depth strategy poses a practical solution for achieving Information Assurance in today’s highly networked environments. In a world where “absolute security” is an unachievable goal, the concept of Information Assurance poses significant benefits to securing one of an organization’s most valuable assets: Information. It will be argued that the approach of achieving Information Assurance within an organisation, coupled with the …

Information Security Governance And Boards Of Directors: Are They Compatible?, Endre Bihari

Australian Information Security Management Conference

This paper presents a critique of emergent views on the roles of the boards of directors in relation to information security. The analysis highlights several concerns about the separation and validation of proper theory and business assertions of information security at board level. New requirements articulated by industry bodies – represented by a selected group of experts and evident in literature – are compared to the underlying theory of corporate governance to identify possible discrepancies. The discussion shows in particular the importance of staying within the theoretical underpinnings of corporate governance when discussing the topic of governance in general and …

Improving Information Security Management In Nonprofit Organisations With Action, Mark Carey-Smith, Karen Nelson, Lauren May

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Information security is vital for protecting important assets of organisations, including the information resources and the organisation’s reputation. In Australia, the nonprofit sector makes a significant contribution to society but is under represented in the information security literature. This paper describes research in progress that is investigating and improving information security management in some nonprofit organisations (NPOs), which incorporates a participatory action research methodology. This approach will enhance the skill set likely to be present in Australian nonprofit organisations, producing a more sustainable solution, as well as contributing to the open literature. The Technology Acceptance Model will be utilised as …

Evolution Of A Database Security Course: Using Non-Enterprise Teaching Tools, Justin Brown

Australian Information Security Management Conference

This paper examines the issues in delivering a university unit of teaching in database security, examining problems in database environment selection and the ability to provide hands on training for students via oncampus and online modes. Initial problems with Linux and then Windows based enterprise database environments prompted the adoption of Microsoft Access as a database tool that was easier to deliver in-class and online. Though Access is file based and has fundamental flaws in its security implementation (within the enterprise context) it can be tweaked to emulate RDBMS level security, allowing students to see how a properly designed security …

Medical Insecurity: When One Size Does Not Fit All, Patricia A. Williams

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Security is most commonly seen as a business concept. This is one reason for the poor uptake and implementation of standard security processes in non-business environments such as general medical practice. It is clear that protection of sensitive patient information is imperative yet the overarching conceptual business processes required to ensure this protection are not well suited to this context. The issue of sensitivity of information, together with the expectation that security can be effectively implemented by non-security trained professionals creates an insecure environment. The general security processes used by business, including those for risk assessment, are difficult to operationally …

Monitoring And Surveillance In The Workplace: Lessons Learnt? – Investigating The International Legal Position, Verine Etsebeth

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

When considering the legal implications of monitoring and surveillance in the workplace, the question may be asked why companies deploy computer surveillance and monitoring in the first place. Several reasons may be put forward to justify why more than 80% of all major American firms monitor employee e-mails and Internet usage. However, what most companies forget is the fact that the absence or presence of monitoring and surveillance activities in a company holds serious legal consequences for companies. From the discussion in this paper it will become apparent that there is a vast difference in how most countries approach this …

Education Organization Baseline Control Protection And Trusted Level Security, Wasim A. Al-Hamdani

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Many education organizations have adopted for security the enterprise best practices for implementation on their campuses, while others focus on ISO Standard (or/and) the National Institution of Standards and Technology.

All these adoptions are dependent on IT personal and their experiences or knowledge of the standard. On top of this is the size of the education organizations. The larger the population in an education organization, the more the problem of information and security become very clear. Thus, they have been obliged to comply with information security issues and adopt the national or international standard. The case is quite different when …

Making Molehills Out Of Mountains: Bringing Security Research To The Classroom, Richard G. Taylor

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

Security research published in academic journals rarely finds its way to the business community or into the classroom. Even though the research is of high quality, it is written in a manner that is difficult to read and to understand. This paper argues that one way to get this academic research into the business community is to incorporate it into security classrooms. To do so, however, academic articles need to be adapted into a classroom-friendly format. This paper suggests ways to do this and provides an example of an academic article that was adapted for use in a security management …

The Common Body Of Knowledge: A Framework To Promote Relevant Information Security Research, Kenneth J. Knapp, F. N. Ford, Thomas E. Marshall, R. K. Rainer

Journal of Digital Forensics, Security and Law

This study proposes using an established common body of knowledge (CBK) as one means of organizing information security literature. Consistent with calls for more relevant information systems (IS) research, this industrydeveloped framework can motivate future research towards topics that are important to the security practitioner. In this review, forty-eight articles from ten IS journals from 1995 to 2004 are selected and cross-referenced to the ten domains of the information security CBK. Further, we distinguish articles as empirical research, frameworks, or tutorials. Generally, this study identified a need for additional empirical research in every CBK domain including topics related to legal …

Telemedicine And The Digital Door Doctor, Darren Webb, Patricia A. Williams

Australian Information Security Management Conference

Telemedicine is changing the way medicine can be practiced, and how medical knowledge is communicated, learnt and researched in today’s technologically oriented society. The adoption of internet based communication has significantly expanded the patients’ ability to access a multitude of world class medical information. Research has shown that patients would welcome the ability to consult a doctor using the same computing tools they use to communicate with family, friends and work colleagues. This paper discusses the use of telemedicine today and how it could be used to access medical services from home. Further, it investigates the incentives and barriers to …

Electronic Surveillance In Hospitals: A Review, Sue Kennedy

Australian Information Security Management Conference

This paper focuses on the increasing use of electronic surveillance systems in hospitals and the apparent lack of awareness of the implications of these systems for privacy of the individual. The systems are used for identification and tracking of equipment, staff and patients. There has been little public comment or analysis of these systems with regard to privacy as their implementation has been driven by security issues. The systems that gather this information include video, smart card and more recently RFID systems. The system applications include tracking of vital equipment, labelling of blood and other samples, tracking of patients, new …

A Quantitative Method For Iso 17799 Gap Analysis, Bilge Karabacak, Ibrahim Sogukpinar

All Faculty and Staff Scholarship

ISO/IEC 17799:2005 is one of the leading standards of information security. It is the code of practice including 133 controls in 11 different domains. There are a number of tools and software that are used by organizations to check whether they comply with this standard. The task of checking compliance helps organizations to determine their conformity to the controls listed in the standard and deliver useful outputs to the certification process. In this paper, a quantitative survey method is proposed for evaluating ISO 17799 compliance. Our case study has shown that the survey method gives accurate compliance results in a …

New Efficient Mds Array Codes For Raid Part I: Reed-Solomon-Like Codes For Tolerating Three Disk Failures, Gui-Liang Feng, Robert H. Deng, Feng Bao, Jia-Chen Shen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This paper presents a class of binary maximum distance separable (MDS) array codes for tolerating disk failures in redundant arrays of inexpensive disks (RAID) architecture based on circular permutation matrices. The size of the information part is m×n, the size of the parity-check part is m×3, and the minimum distance is 4, where n is the number of information disks, the number of parity-check disks is 3, and (m+1) is a prime integer. In practical applications, m can be very large and n is from 20 to 50. The code rate is R=n/(n+3). These codes can be used for tolerating …

Secured Network Model For Management Information System Based On Ip Security (Ipsec) Encryption Using Multilayered Approach Of Network Security, Dr. Amir Hassan Pathan, Muniza Irshad

International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies

Secured flow of information through the network and play important role in the management information systems. In this paper I describe Secured Network Model For Corporate & Business Organization In Based On Network Level IP Security (IPSec) Encryption & Its Physical Layout Using Multilayered Approach. I have four important considerations for adoption of secured network model as secured network model for management information system.

Study Of Data Provenance And Annotation Model For Information Reliability Suggested For Pathological Laboratory Environment In Pakistan, Naila Aamir, Aslam Pervez

International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies

Trust and reliability of information is a very critical issue of today's information age. Keeping provenance of data not only ensures us about its origination but it also keeps track of all the changes that happen to the data through out its life cycle. In this paper we have discussed the importance of data provenance, difference between Where & Why Provenance and different models for keeping such information. The objective of this study is to select a provenance model which can be implemented in scientific environment of our country. For this purpose we have taken the annotation model and have …

Benchmarking E-Business Security: A Model And Framework, Graeme Pye, Matthew J. Warren

Research outputs pre 2011

The dynamic nature of threats and vulnerabilities within the E-business environment can impede online functionality, compromise organisational or customer information, contravene security implementations and thereby undermine online customer confidence. To negate these problems, E-business security has to become proactive, by reviewing and continuously improving security to strengthen E-business security measures and policies. This can be achieved through benchmarking the security measures and policies utilised within the E-business, against recognised information technology (IT) and information security (IS) security standards.

Isram: Information Security Risk Analysis Method, Bilge Karabacak, Ibrahim Sogukpinar

All Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Continuously changing nature of technological environment has been enforcing to revise the process of information security risk analysis accordingly. A number of quantitative and qualitative risk analysis methods have been proposed by researchers and vendors. The purpose of these methods is to analyze today's information security risks properly. Some of these methods are supported by a software package. In this study, a survey based quantitative approach is proposed to analyze security risks of information technologies by taking current necessities into consideration. The new method is named as Information Security Risk Analysis Method (ISRAM). Case study has shown that ISRAM yields …

Vertical Sensitivity For The Information Security Health Rating Of Enterprises, Arcot Desai Narasimhalu, Nagarajan Dayasindhu, Raghavan Subramanian

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

INFOSeMM Maturity model was developed jointly by SMU and Infosys. It is recognized that different industry verticals will have different levels of recommended maturity levels. This paper articulates the need for developing the industry vertical benchmarks.

Rating Information Security Maturity, Arcot Desai Narasimhalu, Nagarajan Dayasindhu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Most CEOs have difficulty relating to the information security investments in their companies. This article presents a summary of a the information security maturity model that the CEOs could use to determine the desired level of investments into information security infrastructure, tools and applications.