The information security policy unpacked:a critical study of the content of university policies

Ensuring the security of corporate information, that is increasingly stored, processed and disseminated using information and communications technologies [ICTs], has become an extremely complex and challenging activity. This is a particularly important concern for knowledge-intensive organisations, such as universities, as the effective conduct of their core teaching and research activities is becoming ever more reliant on the availability, integrity and accuracy of computer-based information resources. One increasingly important mechanism for reducing the occurrence of security breaches, and in so doing, protecting corporate information, is through the formulation and application of a formal information security policy (InSPy). Whilst a great deal has now been written about the importance and role of the information security policy, and approaches to its formulation and dissemination, there is relatively little empirical material that explicitly addresses the structure or content of security policies. The broad aim of the study, reported in this paper, is to fill this gap in the literature by critically examining the structure and content of authentic information security policies, rather than simply making general prescriptions about what they ought to contain. Having established the structure and key features of the reviewed policies, the paper critically explores the underlying conceptualisation of information security embedded in the policies. There are two important conclusions to be drawn from this study: (1) the wide diversity of disparate policies and standards in use is unlikely to foster a coherent approach to security management; and (2) the range of specific issues explicitly covered in university policies is surprisingly low, and reflects a highly techno-centric view of information security management.

Application of Methods of Multi-criteria Evaluation in Choosing a Method of Compression as a Means of Heightening the Information Security of System and Applied Objects

In this paper is proposed a model for researching the capability to influence, by selected methods’ groups of compression, to the co-efficient of information security of selected objects’ groups, exposed to selected attacks’ groups. With the help of methods for multi-criteria evaluation are chosen the methods’ groups with the lowest risk with respect to the information security. Recommendations for future investigations are proposed.

A Proposed Framework for Understanding Information Security Culture and Practices in the Saudi Context

An examination of Information Security (IS) and Information Security Management (ISM) research in Saudi Arabia has shown the need for more rigorous studies focusing on the implementation and adoption processes involved with IS culture and practices. Overall, there is a lack of academic and professional literature about ISM and more specifically IS culture in Saudi Arabia. Therefore, the overall aim of this paper is to identify issues and factors that assist the implementation and the adoption of IS culture and practices within the Saudi environment. The goal of this paper is to identify the important conditions for creating an information security culture in Saudi Arabian organizations. We plan to use this framework to investigate whether security culture has emerged into practices in Saudi Arabian organizations.

Freedom of information implications of information sharing networks for critical infrastructure protection

Protection of “critical infrastructure” has become a major issue for govern- ments worldwide. Yet in Australia, as in many other countries, including the United States, an estimated 90% of critical infrastructure is privately owned or operated commercially – in other words, critical infrastructure protection is not the exclusive domain of government. As a result, information sharing between government and the private sector has become a vitally important component of effective risk management. However, establishing effective arrangements of this kind between the public and private sector needs to take account of existing regimes of access and public disclosure which relate to government-held documents; in particular, that which is established by freedom of information (FOI) legislation. This article examines the extent to which the current Commonwealth FOI regime is likely to act as an impediment to the private sector operators of critical infrastructure participat- ing in government-operated information sharing arrangements. By examining developments in other jurisdictions, principally the United States, the article considers whether amendments to the current Australian FOI regime are necessary to ensure effective participation, consistent with the underlying object and purpose of FOI.

Improving information security management in nonprofit organisations

All organisations, irrespective of size and type, need effective information security management (ISM) practices to protect vital organisational in- formation assets. However, little is known about the information security management practices of nonprofit organisations. Australian nonprofit organisations (NPOs) employed 889,900 people, managed 4.6 million volunteers and contributed $40,959 million to the economy during 2006-2007 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2009). This thesis describes the perceptions of information security management in two Australian NPOs and examines the appropriateness of the ISO 27002 information security management standard in an NPO context. The overall approach to the research is interpretive. A collective case study has been performed, consisting of two instrumental case studies with the researcher being embedded within two NPOs for extended periods of time. Data gathering and analysis was informed by grounded theory and action research, and the Technology Acceptance Model was utilised as a lens to explore the findings and provide limited generalisability to other contexts. The major findings include a distinct lack of information security management best practice in both organisations. ISM Governance and risk management was lacking and ISM policy was either outdated or non- existent. While some user focused ISM practices were evident, reference to standards, such as ISO 27002, were absent. The main factor that negatively impacted on ISM practices was the lack of resources available for ISM in the NPOs studied. Two novel aspects of information security dis- covered in this research were the importance of accuracy and consistency of information. The contribution of this research is a preliminary understanding of ISM practices and perceptions in NPOs. Recommendations for a new approach to managing information security management in nonprofit organisations have been proposed.

The enterprise information security policy as a strategic business policy within the corporate strategic plan (extended abstract)

Information security has been recognized as a core requirement for corporate governance that is expected to facilitate not only the management of risks, but also as a corporate enabler that supports and contributes to the sustainability of organizational operations. In implementing information security, the enterprise information security policy is the set of principles and strategies that guide the course of action for the security activities and may be represented as a brief statement that defines program goals and sets information security and risk requirements. The enterprise information security policy (alternatively referred to as security policy in this paper) that represents the meta-policy of information security is an element of corporate ICT governance and is derived from the strategic requirements for risk management and corporate governance. Consistent alignment between the security policy and the other corporate business policies and strategies has to be maintained if information security is to be implemented according to evolving business objectives. This alignment may be facilitated by managing security policy alongside other corporate business policies within the strategic management cycle. There are however limitations in current approaches for developing and managing the security policy to facilitate consistent strategic alignment. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for security policy management by presenting propositions to positively affect security policy alignment with business policies and prescribing a security policy management approach that expounds on the propositions.

Information Security as Exemplified by Clandestine Collaboration and Influence Exerted by the Polish Internal Security Agency Officers on Journalists - De Lege Lata and De Lege Ferenda Regulations

The text addresses the issue of information security as exemplified by clandestine collaboration and the influence exerted by the Internal Security Agency officers upon journalists. The texts analyzes the de lege lata regulations as well as the de lege ferenda ones. As for the former, the penal provisions of the Act, that is Articles 153b–153d (Chapter 10a) are applicable, whereas as for the latter, the applicable regulations are the 2013 Bill Articles numbered 197-199 (Chapter 10). In both the 2002 Act on the Internal Security Agency and Foreign Intelligence Agency as well as in the 2013 draft Bill of the Internal Security Agency, the legislator penalizes the employment by the officers of the information acquired while fulfilling or in connection with official duties for the purpose of affecting the operation of public authority bodies, entrepreneurs or broadcasters, editors-in-chief, journalists and persons conducting publishing activity. Also, the text analyzes regulations concerned with the penalization of clandestine collaboration engaged in by ABW officers with a broadcaster, editor-in-chief, a journalist and a person conducting publishing activity.

Analysis of information leakage from encrypted Skype conversations

Voice over IP (VoIP) has experienced a tremendous growth over the last few years and is now widely used among the population and for business purposes. The security of such VoIP systems is often assumed, creating a false sense of privacy. This paper investigates in detail the leakage of information from Skype, a widely used and protected VoIP application. Experiments have shown that isolated phonemes can be classified and given sentences identified. By using the dynamic time warping (DTW) algorithm, frequently used in speech processing, an accuracy of 60% can be reached. The results can be further improved by choosing specific training data and reach an accuracy of 83% under specific conditions. The initial results being speaker dependent, an approach involving the Kalman filter is proposed to extract the kernel of all training signals.

Formal validation of automated policy refinement in the management of network security systems

Policy hierarchies and automated policy refinement are powerful approaches to simplify administration of security services in complex network environments. A crucial issue for the practical use of these approaches is to ensure the validity of the policy hierarchy, i.e. since the policy sets for the lower levels are automatically derived from the abstract policies (defined by the modeller), we must be sure that the derived policies uphold the high-level ones. This paper builds upon previous work on Model-based Management, particularly on the Diagram of Abstract Subsystems approach, and goes further to propose a formal validation approach for the policy hierarchies yielded by the automated policy refinement process. We establish general validation conditions for a multi-layered policy model, i.e. necessary and sufficient conditions that a policy hierarchy must satisfy so that the lower-level policy sets are valid refinements of the higher-level policies according to the criteria of consistency and completeness. Relying upon the validation conditions and upon axioms about the model representativeness, two theorems are proved to ensure compliance between the resulting system behaviour and the abstract policies that are modelled.

Information security, cyber crime, and infrastructure protection : information security management within Australian healthcare organisations

Information security is now recognised as critical factor within the healthcare industry. With the gradual move from paper -based to electronic information there is an even greater need for protection. However, financial and operational constraints often exist which influence the practicality of developing a secure system. A new baseline security standard, the Health Information Security Management Implementation Guide, has been drafted which applies specifically to the unique information security requirements of the healthcare industry. The aim of this paper is to look at the effectiveness of the health information security standard and the development of information security within the Australian healthcare industry.

Information security management curriculum development : an Australian example

The development of Information Security as a discipline has only occurred in recent years. Currently Information Security topics are widely taught at tertiary institutions but these topics are taught from a technical perspective and in other cases from a business perspective.

This paper discusses the development of a new security curriculum within Australia and how Australian tertiary institutions responded to that curriculum, the paper also puts forwards a framework that assists in curriculum development.

Towards a knowledge perspective in information security risk assessments - an illustrative case study

Many methodologies exist to assess the security risks associated with unauthorized leakage, modification and interruption of information for a given organisation. We argue that the traditional orientation of these methodologies, towards the identification and assessment of technical information assets, obscures key risks associated with the cultivation and deployment of organisational knowledge. Our argument is developed through an illustrative case study in which a well-documented methodology is applied to a complex data back-up process. This process is seen to depend, in subtle and often informal ways, on knowledge to sustain operational complexity, handle exceptions and make frequent interventions. Although typical information security methodologies identify people as critical assets, we suggest a new approach might draw on more detailed accounts of individual knowledge, collective knowledge, and their relationship to organisational processes. Drawing on the knowledge management literature, we suggest mechanisms to incorporate these knowledge-based considerations into the scope of information security risk methodologies.

User preference of cyber security awareness delivery methods

Operating systems and programmes are more protected these days and attackers have shifted their attention to human elements to break into the organisation's information systems. As the number and frequency of cyber-attacks designed to take advantage of unsuspecting personnel are increasing, the significance of the human factor in information security management cannot be understated. In order to counter cyber-attacks designed to exploit human factors in information security chain, information security awareness with an objective to reduce information security risks that occur due to human related vulnerabilities is paramount. This paper discusses and evaluates the effects of various information security awareness delivery methods used in improving end-users’ information security awareness and behaviour. There are a wide range of information security awareness delivery methods such as web-based training materials, contextual training and embedded training. In spite of efforts to increase information security awareness, research is scant regarding effective information security awareness delivery methods. To this end, this study focuses on determining the security awareness delivery method that is most successful in providing information security awareness and which delivery method is preferred by users. We conducted information security awareness using text-based, game-based and video-based delivery methods with the aim of determining user preferences. Our study suggests that a combined delivery methods are better than individual security awareness delivery method.

A competitive three-level pruning technique for information security

The reduction of size of ensemble classifiers is important for various security applications. The majority of known pruning algorithms belong to the following three categories: ranking based, clustering based, and optimization based methods. The present paper introduces and investigates a new pruning technique. It is called a Three-Level Pruning Technique, TLPT, because it simultaneously combines all three approaches in three levels of the process. This paper investigates the TLPT method combining the state-of-the-art ranking of the Ensemble Pruning via Individual Contribution ordering, EPIC, the clustering of the K-Means Pruning, KMP, and the optimisation method of Directed Hill Climbing Ensemble Pruning, DHCEP, for a phishing dataset. Our new experiments presented in this paper show that the TLPT is competitive in comparison to EPIC, KMP and DHCEP, and can achieve better outcomes. These experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the TLPT technique in this example of information security application.

ISO/IEC 27000, 27001 and 27002 for Information Security Management

With the increasing significance of information technology, there is an urgent need for adequate measures of information security. Systematic information security management is one of most important initiatives for IT management. At least since reports about privacy and security breaches, fraudulent accounting practices, and attacks on IT systems appeared in public, organizations have recognized their responsibilities to safeguard physical and information assets. Security standards can be used as guideline or framework to develop and maintain an adequate information security management system (ISMS). The standards ISO/IEC 27000, 27001 and 27002 are international standards that are receiving growing recognition and adoption. They are referred to as “common language of organizations around the world” for information security. With ISO/IEC 27001 companies can have their ISMS certified by a third-party organization and thus show their customers evidence of their security measures.