INFORMATION SECURITY MANAGEMENT IN WEB-BASED PRODUCT DESIGN AND REALIZATION

There is an increasing interest in research and development in the area of information security. Areas of computer misuse include the theft of computational resources, disruption of computational services, unauthorized disclosure of computer information and unauthorized modification of computer information. In the recent past decades, there have been myriads of computer security implementations. Nevertheless, there have also been numerous computer break-ins and security breaches. This is a thesis on Information Security Management in Web-Based Product Design and Realization, which is a sub-cluster of a broader currently on-going research project called Pegasus, at the Automation and Robotics Laboratory, University of Pittsburgh. Pegasus is a proposed scalable, flexible, and efficient collaborative web-based (or Internet-oriented) product design system, which will involve continuous transfer of sensitive information across seamless and possibly, international boundaries. The thesis commences with a statement of the problem of information security and presents a comprehensive summary of previous and current related research along with applicable results and application areas. With the dawn of the 21st century upon us and use of the Internet growing exponentially, secrecy in the realm of technology has become an important issue. A managerial approach for alleviating the problem of information security or reducing it to the barest minimum is proposed in this thesis through the design and development of an Information Security Management Model (ISM Model) to monitor, enforce and manage information security. The design of the ISM Model incorporates a methodology for referencing activities in Pegasus with information security technologies