| 1. |
- Johnson, Pontus, et al.
(författare)
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Assessment of Business Process Information Security
- 2007
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Ingår i: International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management. - 1741-8763. ; 3:2, s. 118-130
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Business processes are increasingly dependent on their supporting information systems. With this dependence comes an increased security risk with respect to the information flowing through the processes. This paper presents a method for assessment of the level of information security within business processes in the form of a percentage number, where a high score indicates good information security and a low score indicates a poor level of information security. The method also provides a numerical estimate of the credibility of the information security score, so that an assessment based on few and uncertain pieces of evidence is associated with low credibility and an assessment based on a large set of trustworthy evidence is associated with high credibility. A common problem with information security assessments is the cost related to collecting the required evidence. The paper proposes an evidence collection strategy designed to minimize the effort spent on gathering assessment data while maintaining the desired credibility of the results. A case study is presented, demonstrating the use of the method.
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| 2. |
- Johansson, Erik, et al.
(författare)
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Assessment of Enterprise Information Security : The Importance of Prioritization
- 2005
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Ingår i: Ninth IEEE International EDOC Enterprise Computing Conference, Proceedings. - 0769524419 ; , s. 207-218
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Assessing the level of information, security in an enterprise is a serious challenge for many organizations. This paper considers the prioritization of the field of enterprise information security. The paper thus considers how we may know what parts Of information security are important for a company to address and what parts are not. Two methods for prioritization are used. The results demonstrate to what extent different standards committees, guideline authors and expert groups differ in their opinions on what the important issues are in enterprise information security. The ISOJEC 17799, the NIST SP 800-26, the ISF standards committees, the CMU/SEI OCTAVE framework authors and an expert panel at the Swedish Information Processing Society (DFS) are considered. The differences in prioritization have important consequences on enterprise information security assessments. The effects on the information security assessment results in a European energy company are presented in the paper.
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| 3. |
- Johansson, Erik, 1967-
(författare)
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Assessment of Enterprise Information Security : How to make it Credible and Efficient
- 2005
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Information is an important business asset in today’s enterprises. Hence enterprise information security is an important system quality that must be carefully managed. Although enterprise information security is acknowledged as one of the most central areas for enterprise IT management, the topic still lacks adequate support for decision making on top-management level. This composite thesis consists of four articles which presents the Enterprise Information Security Assessment Method (EISAM), a comprehensive method for assessing the current state of the enterprise information security. The method is useful in helping guide top-management’s decision-making because of the following reasons: 1) it is easy to understand, 2) it is prescriptive, 3) it is credible, and 4) it is efficient. The assessment result is easy to understand because it presents a quantitative estimate. The result can be presented as an aggregated single value, abstracting the details of the assessment. The result is easy to grasp and enables comparisons both within the organization and in terms of industry in general. The method is prescriptive since it delivers concrete and traceable measurements. This helps guide top-level management in their decisions regarding enterprise-wide information security by highlighting the areas where improvements efforts are essential. It is credible for two reasons. Firstly, the method presents an explicit and transparent definition of enterprise information security. Secondly, the method in itself includes an indication of assessment uncertainty, expressed in terms of confidence levels. The method is efficient because it focuses on important enterprise information security aspects, and because it takes into account how difficult it is to find security related evidence. Being resource sparse it enables assessments to take place regularly, which gives valuable knowledge for long-term decision-making. The usefulness of the presented method, along with its development, has been verified through empirical studies at a leading electric power company in Europe and through statistical surveys carried out among information security experts in Sweden. The success from this research should encourage further researcher in using these analysis techniques to guide decisions on other enterprise architecture attributes.
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| 4. |
- Johansson, Erik, et al.
(författare)
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Assessment of Enterprise Information Security : The Importance of Information Search Cost
- 2006
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Ingår i: Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. - 1530-1605. ; 9, s. 219a-
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- There are today several methods and standards available for assessment of the level of information security in an enterprise. A problem with these assessment methods is that they neither provide an indication of the amount of effort required to obtain the assessment nor an approximation of this measure's credibility. This paper describes a part of a new method for assessing the level of enterprise information security expresses the credibility of the results in terms of confidence levels and make use of an estimation of the cost of searching for security evidence. Such methods for predicting information search cost of assessments are detailed in the paper. Search cost predictions are used for providing guidance on how to minimize the effort spent on performing enterprise information security assessments. The conclusions are based on a security assessment performed at a large European energy company and a statistical survey among Swedish security experts.
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| 5. |
- Johansson, Erik, et al.
(författare)
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Assessment of Enterprise Information Security : An Architecture Theory Diagram Definition
- 2005
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Ingår i: Proceedings CSER 2005. - 0615128432 ; , s. 136-146
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In order to manage and improve something, it is normally necessary to be able to assess the current state of affairs. A problem with assessment, however, is that in order to assess, it is normally necessary to be able to define the assessment topic. These general statements are also true within the area of Enterprise Information Security. Although much has been written on the topic, there is little consensus on what Enterprise Information Security really is. The lack of consensus lessens the credibility of existing assessment approaches. This paper presents a well-defined, transparent, and quantified method for the assessment of Enterprise Information Security. The method is based on the consolidation of the most prominent sources on the topic and results in a single quantitative estimate of the level of Enterprise Information Security in a company. The usefulness of the presented method has been verified by a case study at a large European electric utility. The present paper is a part of an ongoing research project on a credible and cost-effective method for Enterprise Information Security assessment.
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| 6. |
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| 7. |
- Johansson, Erik, et al.
(författare)
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Assessment of Enterprise Information Security in Electric Utilities : The Importance of Prioritization
- 2006
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Ingår i: Proceedings CIGRE Session 2006.
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- In today’s large electric utilities enterprise system is highly complex. Technically, they possess several hundreds of extensively interconnected and heterogeneous IT systems performing tasks that vary from Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to real-time control and monitoring of the processes, such as Distributed Control System (DCS) and Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition System (SCADA). Organizationally, the enterprise system embraces business processes and business units using, as well as maintaining and acquiring, the IT systems. Information and systems are to a large extent becoming integrated in industry operations since communication and sharing of information are becoming more efficient and faster than before. However, the networking and interconnection of systems can increase the enterprise exposure to information security risks. The significance of information security has been continuously increasing in the management of organizations and in ensuring their operating ability as well as in maintaining disturbance-free and efficient operations. Thus, enterprise information security has become an increasingly important system quality. Assessing a sufficient level of information security is a necessary pre-requisite for the continuance and credibility of operations. But assessing the level of information security in an enterprise is a serious challenge for many organizations, since the area still lacks sufficient support for decision-making on a top-management level. One problem with such assessments is that there are various views on what, exactly, should be measured. There are different opinions on what the constituent parts of enterprise information security are and what these parts? relative importance is. Addressing that problem, this paper presents an operational definition and prioritization of the field of enterprise information security. First, the paper proposes a framework for capturing the semantic essence of enterprise information security. Then, the relative weights of the framework?s subdomains are quantified. Two methods for prioritization are used to obtain the weights. The results demonstrate to what extent different standards committees, guideline authors and expert groups differ in their opinions on what the important issues are in enterprise information security. As prioritization sources, the ISO/IEC 17799, the NIST SP 800-26, the ISF standards committees, the CMU/SEI OCTAVE framework authors and an expert panel at the Swedish Information Processing Society (DFS) are considered. To demonstrate the practical consequences, the effects of varying prioritizations on the enterprise information security assessment results in a European energy company are presented.
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| 8. |
- Johnson, Pontus, et al.
(författare)
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A tool for enterprise architecture analysis
- 2007
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Ingår i: 11TH IEEE INTERNATIONAL ENTERPRISE DISTRIBUTED OBJECT COMPUTING CONFERENCE, PROCEEDINGS. - LOS ALAMITOS : IEEE COMPUTER SOC. - 9780769528915 ; , s. 142-153
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- The discipline of enterprise architecture advocates the use of models to support decision-making on enterprise-wide information system issues. In order to provide such support, enterprise architecture models should be amenable to analyses of various properties, as e.g. the availability, performance, interoperability, modifiability, and information security of the modeled enterprise information systems. This paper presents a software tool for such analyses. The tool guides the user in the generation of enterprise architecture models and subjects these models to analyses resulting in quantitative measures of the chosen quality attribute. The paper describes and exemplifies both the architecture and the usage of the tool.
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