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Effective Information Security

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Effective Information Security Requires a Balance of Social and Technology Factors
MIS Quarterly Executive Vol. 9 No. 3/ Sept 2010

Team 3 Article 12 Review, BUS ADM 744 Kirt Oaks, Deepika Gopukumar, Nutan Narway, Gregory Gohr

*Note: The superscript number refers to the references mentioned at the end of the document.

INFORMATION SECURITY HAS BECOME A STRATEGIC ISSUE: With growing threats of cyberterrorism and evolving government regulations information security is at the forefront of many organization’s priorities. Such actions as hiring of security executives, restructuring the information security structure within a company or increasing budgets for security have helped companies to feel more secure and pass that on to their shareholders and customers. Companies have prevalently relied on technology based solutions, but that is only part of the solution. There needs to be a connection between the security entity and the business. This will allow for the budgets and policies to be more in line with the business requirements. A technically focused information security strategy was followed in the past. Since security was technically focused, organizations placed the information security group as part of low level function which operated independently from business which in turn did not serve the business effectively. To overcome this, current information security strategy follows a socio-technical security strategy which is strategically focused or business driven. Global spending on security was at $56 billion in 20111. According to Gartner that number will be $71.1 billion in 2014 and will grow to $76.9 billion in 20152. With this amount of money being spent on information security, it will become more crucial to spend that money more effectively with proper planning and methods and potentially spending less money by keeping security at an appropriate

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