Towards a framework to ensure alignment among information security professionals, ICT security auditors and regulatory officials in implementing information security in South Africa

Information security in the form of IT governance is part of corporate governance. Corporate governance requires that structures and processes are in place with appropriate checks and balances to enable directors to discharge their responsibilities. Accordingly, information security must be treated in the same way as all the other components of corporate governance. This includes making information security a core part of executive and board responsibilities. Critically, corporate governance requires proper checks and balances to be established in an organisation; consequently, these must be in place for all information security implementations. In order to achieve this, it is important to have the involvement of three key role players, namely information security professionals, ICT security auditors and regulatory officials (from now on these will be referred to collectively as the ‘role players’). These three role players must ensure that any information security controls implemented are properly checked and evaluated against the organisation’s strategic objectives and regulatory requirements. While maintaining their individual independence, the three role players must work together to achieve their individual goals with a view to, as a collective, contributing positively to the overall information security of an organisation. Working together requires that each role player must clearly understand its individual role, as well the role of the other players at different points in an information security programme. In a nutshell, the role players must be aligned such that their involvement will deliver maximum value to the organisation. This alignment must be based on a common framework which is understood and accepted by all three role players. This study proposes a South African Information Security Alignment (SAISA) framework to ensure the alignment of the role players in the implementation and evaluation of information security controls. The structure of the SAISA framework is based on that of the COBIT 4.1 (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology). Hence, the SAISA framework comprises four domains, namely, Plan and Organise Information Security (PO-IS), Acquire and Implement Information Security (AI-IS), Deliver and Support Information Security (DS-IS) and Monitor and Evaluate Information Security (ME-IS). The SAISA framework brings together the three role players with a view to assisting them to understand their respective roles, as well as those of the other role players, as they implement and evaluate information security controls. The framework is intended to improve cooperation among the role players by ensuring that they view each other as partners in this process. Through the life cycle structure it adopts, the SAISA framework provides an effective and efficient tool for rolling out an information security programme in an organisationComputer ScienceM. Sc. (Computer Science

CBAC – a model for conflict-based access control

Organisations that seek a competitive advantage cannot afford to compromise their brand reputation or expose it to disrepute. When employees leek information, it is not only the breach of confidentiality that is a problem, but it also causes a major brand reputation problem for the organisation. Any possible breach of confidentiality should be minimised by implementing adequate security within the organisation and among its employees. An important issue to address is the development of suitable access control models that are able to restrict access not only to unauthorised data sets, but also to unauthorised combinations of data sets. Within organisations such as banks, clients may exist that are in conflict with one another. This conflict results from the fact that clients are functioning in the same business domain and that their information should be shielded from one another because they are in competition for various reasons. When information on any of these conflicting clients is extracted from their data sets via a data-mining process and used to their detriment or to the benefit of the guilty party, this is considered a breach of confidentiality. In data-mining environments, access control usually strips the data of any identity so as to concentrate on tendencies and ensure that data cannot be traced back to a respondent. There is an active research field in data mining that focuses specifically on ‘preserving’ the privacy of the data during the data-mining process. However, this approach does not account for those situations when data mining needs to be performed to give answers to specific clients. In such cases, when the clients’ identity cannot be stripped, it is essential to minimise the chances of a possible breach of confidentiality. For this reason, this thesis investigated an environment where conflicting clients’ information can easily be gathered and used or sold, as to justify the inclusion of conflict management in the proposed access control model. This thesis presents the Conflict-based Access Control (CBAC) model. The model makes it possible to manage conflict on different levels of severity among the clients of an organisation – not only as specified by the clients, but also as calculated by the organisation. Both types of conflict have their own cut-off points when the conflict is considered to be of no value any longer. Finally, a proof-of-concept prototype illustrates that the incorporation of conflict management is a viable solution to the problem of access control as it minimises the chances of a breach of confidentialityThesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2012.Computer Scienceunrestricte