Adaptability infrastructure for bridging IT security evaluation and options theory

Abstract

The constantly rising threats in IT infrastructure raise many concerns for an organization, altering security requirements according to dynamically changing environment, need of midcourse decision management and deliberate evaluation of security measures are most striking. Common Criteria for IT security evaluation has long been considered to be victimized by uncertain IT infrastructure and considered resource hungry, complex and time consuming process. Considering this aspect we have continued our research quest for analyzing the opportunities to empower IT security evaluation process using Real Options thinking. The focus of our research is not only the applicability of real options analysis in IT security evaluation but also observing its implications in various domains including IT security investments and risk management. We find it motivating and worth doing to use an established method from corporate finance i.e. real options and utilize its rule of thumb technique as a road map to counter uncertainty issues for evaluation of IT products. We believe employing options theory in security evaluation will provide the intended benefits. i.e. i) manage dynamically changing security requirements ii) accelerating evaluation process iii) midcourse decision management. Having all the capabilities of effective uncertainty management, options theory follows work procedures based on mathematical calculations quite different from information security work processes. In this paper, we will address the diversities between the work processes of security evaluation and real options analysis. We present an adaptability infrastructure to bridge the gap and make them coherent with each other. This liaison will transform real options concepts into a compatible mode that provides grounds to target IT security evaluation and common criteria issues. We will address ESAM system as an example for illustrations and applicability of the concepts.