An Integrated Framework for Managing Information Technology Security Uncertainty

Information security to date has been driven a lot of attention in business world. The cyber security standards play significant and crucial role in promoting feasible approaches to organizations while making comprehensive strategical planning. This paper aims at providing a systematic overview of information technology (IT) security management in organizations. Conducted a structured literature from academic database and industry whitepapers, we review a number of the critical issues and challenges facing the industry today and in the future. In line with the fundamental elements of information security, we propose an integrated framework to understand the current situation of IT security management. In particular, we focus on several critical fundamental functions of IT security management: Security and Risk Management, Security Operations, and Security Assessments and Testing. Then, we use the proposed framework as a lens to discuss and solve the security issues in bring your own device (BYOD) in organizations. Keywords: IT security, IT security framework, bring your own device DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/12-18-01 Publication date:June 30th 202

Strategically Addressing the Latest Challenges of Workplace Mobility to Meet the Increasing Mobile Usage Demands

During this post-PC era, many organizations are embracing the concept of IT consumerization/ Bring-Your-Own Device (BYOD) in their workplace. BYOD is a strategy that enables employees to utilize their personally-owned mobile devices, such as smart phones, tablets, laptops, and netbooks, to connect to the corporate network and access enterprise data. It is estimated that employees will bring two to four Internet-capable devices to work for personal and professional activities. From increased employee satisfaction and productivity to lower IT equipment and operational expenditures, companies have recognized that mobile devices are reasonably essential to their own success. However, many organizations are facing significant challenges with the explosion of mobile devices being used today along with provisioning the appropriate supporting infrastructure due to the unprecedented demands on the wireless and network infrastructures. For example, there is not only a growth in the number of wirelessly connected devices but the amount of bandwidth being consumed on the enterprise networks as well which is furthermore driven by increased usage of video and enterprise applications. Managing mobility and storage along with securing corporate assets have become difficult tasks for IT professionals as many organizations underestimate the potential security and privacy risks of using wireless devices to access organizational resources and data. Therefore, to address the needs and requirements of a new mobile workforce, organizations must involve key members from the Information Technology (IT), Human Resources (HR) and various business units to evaluate the existing and emerging issues and risks posed by BYOD. Then a mobile strategy should be developed by taking into consideration the enterprise objectives to ensure it aligns with the overall organizational strategy. There are various solutions available to address the needs and demands of an organization, such as Distributed Intelligence Architecture, network optimization, monitoring tools, unified management and security platforms, and other security measures. By implementing a suitable mobile strategy, organizations can ensure their particular enterprise network and wireless architecture is designed for highly scalability, performance and reliability. They must also evaluate their existing policies and procedures to ensure appropriate security and privacy measures are in place to address the increasing mobile usage demands and potential liability risks. By taking these factors into consideration, our team has analyzed the current BYOD issues for Educational Testing Service (ETS), which is a non-profit organization based in Princeton, New Jersey. Our findings have revealed a few major technical concerns relating to inadequate network and wireless infrastructure and the lack of a unified management and security platform. Thus, the team has recommended for ETS to implement Distributed Intelligence Architecture, network optimization and Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) to address and resolve their current issues and risks. In conclusion, companies are beginning to seize this transition in order to become competitive and productive in the workplace; however the unprecedented demands on the corporate network and risk to data security are critical aspects that need to be evaluated on an on-going basis. With this analysis, organizations can review, evaluate and implement the proposed solutions and best practices to address the most common BYOD-related issues that companies are facing these days. However, organizations should continually research the latest technologies that may be available and implement solutions that specifically meet their issues

BYOD adoption concerns in the South African financial institution sector

Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is an emerging trend and practice that is growing in use in many organizations. There is however very limited literature on BYOD in the context of financial institutions from a developing country perspective. The dearth of such studies is problematic because financial institutions deal with a lot of sensitive and confidential information and therefore their adoption of BYOD could be detrimental to their practice. This study contributes to this gap in literature by providing empirical observation that show how technological and contextual factors affect financial institutions adoption of BYOD. Following a qualitative approach, and using semi structured interviews as a source of data collection; the findings show that cost, complexity, a culture of innovation, and top management support were factors that were perceived as enablers of BYOD. South African organizations in the financial services use BYOD to help add value to their work as opposed to it being a cost saving necessity. However, the continuous changes in government regulation regarding the use of data; and the lack of conducive ICT infrastructure were deemed as hindrances to BYOD. As a result of the changing regulations and the lack of knowhow on implementation of these regulations, most organizations failed to formalize their BYOD strategies

Mobile technology-enhanced asset maintenance in an SME

This article is ©Emerald Group Publishing and permission has been granted for this version to appear on http;//chesterrep.openrepository.com. Emerald does not grant permission for this article to be further copied/distributed or hosted elsewhere without the express permission from Emerald Group Publishing Limited.This article discusses the development of a prototype system to demonstrate the potential benefits of deploying mobile technology to enhance asset maintenance processes in a small food manufacturing plant