Organizational Security Policies Research Articles

Crafting organizational security policies for critical infrastructures: an architectural approach

Critical infrastructures (CIs) are an essential enabler of a nation's well-being and span a multitude of sectors. It is critical to ensure their resilience and protection against security threats, straight from the design phase. Nowadays, CIs take the form of complex socio-technical systems, which rely heavily on digital technology and off-the-shelf components, introducing challenges due to non-composability of security properties. A comprehensive approach for their protection integrates physical security, cybersecurity, risk management, and collaboration with the stakeholders, as they play a key role in identifying and managing vulnerabilities and in the impact evaluation of potential security breaches. Other key requirements in the context of CIs are interoperability, automation and governance, which are often neglected in the process of crafting security policies, as this takes as input the system as-is and disregards architectural design considerations. In this paper, we propose a methodology that takes care of the inter-dependencies between security goals in a given CI and the relevant countermeasures for its subsystems. Our approach considers the relationships between the CI subsystems, focusing on organizational security objectives and the requisite countermeasures to achieve these objectives. The methodology is supported by a context-independent Reference Model for Information Assurance and Security, which can be applied across diverse critical sectors. To complement the methodology, we propose a formal language that enables the verification of the fulfillment of the security goals in a specific solution architecture. The aim is to enable and support CI security, promoting resilience and adaptability in the face of evolving threats. Leveraging the formal language, the proposed methodology can be integrated into an open-source automated tool-chain for the validation of composite systems. Through these contributions, we effectively address the unique security challenges inherent in CI, facilitating automation and interoperability to enhance security and governance in these crucial domains.

Understanding extra-role security behaviors: An integration of self-determination theory and construal level theory

Extra-role security behaviors (ERSBs) – spontaneous security behaviors that are not prescribed in organizational security policies – are seen as a useful addition to securing informational assets in organizations. However, this exploratory study, based on findings obtained through 29 in-depth-interviews, challenges this positive perspective and shows that extra-role security behaviors cut both ways: They are either helpful or harmful. In addition, our results suggest that (1) ERSB contributes to varying degrees to the effectiveness of information security compliance, (2) the self-determination theory contributes to understanding the motivators for ERSB, and (3) the construal level theory of psychological distance explains the differential risk evaluation of ERSB. We discuss implications for researchers and practitioners – particularly in terms of promoting the beneficial nature of extra-role security behaviors – and suggest compelling avenues for future research.

Digital Workplaces and Information Security Behavior of Business Employees: An Empirical Study of Saudi Arabia

In the post pandemic era, the telecommuting of business employees has widely become acceptable in organizations, which demands extensive dependence on digital technologies. In addition, this poses additional security threats for business employees as well as organizations. In order to better respond to security threats, business employees must have a higher level of awareness of the potential threats that are relevant to digital infrastructure used within the workplace. In this paper, we present a quantitative study conducted in line with the theory of planned behavior to gain insight into employee behavior toward information security within different business sectors in Saudi Arabia. The key factors chosen for our model were password management, infrastructure security management, email management, organizational security policy, organizational support and training, and the perception of the level of security. We have applied structured equation modelling to identify most of the relevant factors based on the respondents’ feedback. The results based on the business employee behavior showed that they respondents did not perceive all of the constructs of our model as relevant security factors, which can potentially result in security lapses. This indicates that more security-related measures should be put in place and that business employees should be updated periodically about potential security threats. To this effect, we divided the studied security measures into those which should be implemented at organizational and individual levels. The results will potentially help business managers to design appropriate security trainings, guidelines, and policies for their employees to ensure more information security awareness and protect their technological infrastructure, especially within home office environments.

An Adversarial Dance: Toward an Understanding of Insiders’ Responses to Organizational Information Security Measures

Despite the increased focus on organizational security policies and programs, some employees continue to engage in maladaptive responses to security measures (i.e., behaviors other than those recommended, intended, or prescribed). To help shed light on insiders’ adaptive and maladaptive responses to IS security measures, we conducted a case study of an organization at the forefront of security policy initiatives. Drawing on the beliefs-actions-outcomes (BAO) model to analyze our case data, we uncover a potentially nonvirtuous cycle consisting of security-related beliefs, actions, and outcomes, which we refer to as an “adversarial dance.” Explaining our results, we describe a novel belief framework that identifies four security belief profiles and uncovers an underexplored outcome of IS security: insiders’ lived security experiences. We find that individuals’ unfavorable lived security experiences produce counterproductive security-related beliefs that, in turn, lead to maladaptive behaviors. Maladaptive behaviors create new potential for security risk, leading to increased organizational security measures to counter them. Thus, the adversarial dance continues, as the new security measures have the potential to reinforce counterproductive security-related beliefs about the importance and risk of IS security and lead to new maladaptive behaviors. To help situate our findings within the current security literature, we integrate the results with prior research based on extant theories. While this paper is not the first to suggest that security measures can elicit maladaptive behaviors, the emergent belief framework and expanded BAO model of IS security constitute an important contribution to the behavioral IS security literature.

Enhanced social engineering framework mitigating against social engineering attacks in higher education

AbstractThe purpose of this paper was to develop and validate an enhanced social engineering framework to mitigate against social engineering attacks. The study formulated a theoretical framework which was informed by the strengths and weaknesses of existing social engineering frameworks, the framework was also guided by the Dhillon's balanced control theory. The theoretical framework was validated by experts using the Delphi technique which comprised of three rounds. A sample of 25 experts from three higher education institutions which met the inclusion criteria were selected. The study was guided by the interpretivism philosophy to get a deep understanding of the phenomenon under study. The findings reveal that social engineering awareness, organizational security policy and Internet of Things (IOT) security succor in reducing social engineering attacks. The findings from this study will be utilized by decision makers in higher education sector to come up with engaging social engineering training programs, set up an organizational security policy and preclude IOT attacks to mitigate social engineering attacks in higher education. The study contributes to the field of social engineering with an enhanced social engineering framework that mitigate against social engineering attacks. The study adds to under‐represented social engineering framework in higher education.

Investigation of information security policy violations among oil and gas employees: A security-related stress and avoidance coping perspective

Information security is one of the most crucial considerations in digitising Oil and Gas (O&G) organisations. For ensuring information security policy compliance, O&G organisations enforce heavy security requirements. The purpose of this article is to assess how O&G employees cope with stressful information security tasks and how security-related stress (SRS) is related to information security policy violations among O&G employees in developing countries. Based on the coping theory, this article develops a theoretical framework to examine O&G employees’ intention to violate information security policies. The framework is tested using a survey of 270 managers/executives from 150 Malaysian O&G organisations. The results indicated that O&G employees perceive security requirements as stressful to follow and adopt avoidance coping strategies that lead them to violate organisational information security policies. For practitioners, the study findings demonstrate the prevalence of technostress in O&G organisations and suggest alternative mechanisms to address the stressful effects of information security requirements. This article contributes to the information system security literature by testing procrastination and psychological detachment with SRS in the context of developing countries' O&G organisations’ employees and provides an understanding of how O&G employees adopt avoidance coping.

HEAD Access Control Metamodel: Distinct Design, Advanced Features, and New Opportunities

Access control (AC) policies are a set of rules administering decisions in systems and they are increasingly used for implementing flexible and adaptive systems to control access in today’s internet services, networks, security systems, and others. The emergence of the current generation of networking environments, with digital transformation, such as the internet of things (IoT), fog computing, cloud computing, etc., with their different applications, bring out new trends, concepts, and challenges to integrate more advanced and intelligent systems in critical and heterogeneous structures. This fact, in addition to the COVID-19 pandemic, has prompted a greater need than ever for AC due to widespread telework and the need to access resources and data related to critical domains such as government, healthcare, industry, and others, and any successful cyber or physical attack can disrupt operations or even decline critical services to society. Moreover, various declarations have announced that the world of AC is changing fast, and the pandemic made AC feel more essential than in the past. To minimize security risks of any unauthorized access to physical and logical systems, before and during the pandemic, several AC approaches are proposed to find a common specification for security policy where AC is implemented in various dynamic and heterogeneous computing environments. Unfortunately, the proposed AC models and metamodels have limited features and are insufficient to meet the current access control requirements. In this context, we have developed a Hierarchical, Extensible, Advanced, and Dynamic (HEAD) AC metamodel with substantial features that is able to encompass the heterogeneity of AC models, overcome the existing limitations of the proposed AC metamodels, and follow the various technology progressions. In this paper, we explain the distinct design of the HEAD metamodel, starting from the metamodel development phase and reaching to the policy enforcement phase. We describe the remaining steps and how they can be employed to develop more advanced features in order to open new opportunities and answer the various challenges of technology progressions and the impact of the pandemic in the domain. As a result, we present a novel approach in five main phases: metamodel development, deriving models, generating policies, policy analysis and assessment, and policy enforcement. This approach can be employed to assist security experts and system administrators to design secure systems that comply with the organizational security policies that are related to access control.

What influences employees to follow security policies?

Data and information play a critical role in cyber security policies in organizations, so it is essential to protect them. Companies invest in the latest and most secured softwares, and specialized IT employees to protect the firm’s data and information. Nevertheless, there are still incidents and huge losses of information because of the careless behaviour of the employees. Companies continue to spend considerable sums on security and yet remain in danger of attacks. By combining the value of congruence model (VC), the theory of planned behaviour model (TPB), and security conscious care behaviour we show that security behaviour can be influenced through effortless and low-cost measures that are a very advantageous solution for companies to protect their assets. With a sample of 193 respondents we demonstrate that companies need only to keep their employees motivated, happy, and satisfied in order to encourage them to adhere to the cyber security policies already in place. We show that information security awareness moderates the relationship between subjective norms and behaviour intention, and that job satisfaction moderates the relationship between behaviour intention and security behaviour. We show practical and theoretical implications based on our conclusions.

Modeling organizational activities to create an organization's security policy using business processes

Modeling organizational activities to create an organization's security policy using business processes

Can peers help reduce violations of information security policies? The role of peer monitoring

ABSTRACT Peers may help others avoid violating organisational information security policies (ISPs). This study explores how peer monitoring reduces employee ISP violation intention. We propose that peer monitoring discourages employees from violating ISP. Moreover, trust plays an important role. Trust not only facilitates peer monitoring, but also moderates the effect of peer monitoring on employee ISP violation intention. In addition, collective responsibility leads to peer monitoring. We test our research model with data from two waves of surveys of 254 employees in the United States conducted two weeks apart. We utilise four scenarios in the second wave of surveys capturing the dependent variable and measure all other constructs in the first wave of surveys. Our results suggest that peer monitoring decreases one’s intention to violate ISPs. Furthermore, both collective responsibility and trust contribute to peer monitoring. Finally, trust amplifies the effect of peer monitoring on employees’ intention to violate ISPs. We discuss the theoretical contributions and practical implications.

Preventing insider threats to enhance organizational security: The role of opportunity-reducing techniques

Insider threats are one of the major potential risks jeopardizing organizational security. Many organizations have applied opportunity-reducing techniques to enhance security. These techniques have been classified into hard and soft forms based on their potential propensity to infringe on employees’ personal space. Hard form techniques have been widely adopted owing to their efficiency in saving cost and time. However, this study argues that hard form techniques would restrict personal autonomy, leading employees to disrespect the organizational security policies. To test the research hypotheses, a scenario-based questionnaire survey was conducted on 5,158 Prolific Academic members with working experience in the service industry and research and development, and the information industry. Two hundred and fifty-nine valid responses were analyzed using partial least square based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). The results show that the hard form techniques induce employees to feel intrusion of their privacy, making them morally irresponsible for their behavior, and even committing an insider attack. Hard form techniques can produce an adverse effect that is opposite to the intended purpose. The results imply that the practical method of making hard controls less intrusive, including the implementation of soft controls and horizontal decision-making processes for security policies, should be explored.

The Role of Top Management in Developing Security and Safety Culture in the Organization (A Case of Enterprise Group)

The study investigated the role top management play in developing security and safety culture in the organization. Specifically, a case study exploration was used to evaluate one primary area of interest: 1. the role top management plays in developing organization’s security and safety culture. The strategy used for this work was exploratory, with both qualitative and quantitative approaches since the data collected would be converted into numerical value for better interpretation. The target population was the staff of Enterprise Group in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana, and the sample was composed of 30 management and staff members, using convenience sampling. Primary and secondary sources of data were used in this study. A survey questionnaire was used to acquire information from the target management and staff of Enterprise Group Ltd. The data gathered was analyzed quantitatively by using descriptive statistical tables and percentages where the Chi-Square test was considered. Statistical package for social sciences (SPSS) version 25 software was also used in the analysis. The study concluded that top management plays a role in developing security and safety culture in organizations through Security and Safety Supervision Committee, by building enabling security and safety working environment in organizations, ensuring there are policies and procedures guidelines in place in organizations. When there is Daily Reporting and available systems to address non-compliance issues in the organization to develop security and safety culture among employees. it is recommended that the Government and regulatory bodies of organizations should emphasize the establishment of security and safety policies in organizations.

Optimal Employee Recruitment in Organizations under Attribute-Based Access Control.

For any successful business endeavor, recruitment of required number of appropriately qualified employees in proper positions is a key requirement. For effective utilization of human resources, reorganization of such workforce assignment is also a task of utmost importance. This includes situations when the under-performing employees have to be substituted with fresh applicants. Generally, the number of candidates applying for a position is large and hence, the task of identifying an optimal subset becomes critical. Moreover, a human resource manager would also like to make use of the opportunity of retirement of employees to improve manpower utilization. However, the constraints enforced by the security policies prohibit any arbitrary assignment of tasks to employees. Further, the new employees should have the capabilities required to handle the assigned tasks. In this article, we formalize this problem as the Optimal Recruitment Problem (ORP), wherein the goal is to select the minimum number of fresh employees from a set of candidates to fill the vacant positions created by the outgoing employees, while ensuring satisfiability of the specified security conditions. The model used for specification of authorization policies and constraints is Attribute Based Access Control (ABAC), since it is considered to be the de facto next generation framework for handling organizational security policies. We show that the ORP problem is NP-hard and propose a greedy heuristic for solving it. Extensive experimental evaluation shows both the effectiveness as well as efficiency of the proposed solution.

군장교의 윤리적 성향과 업무환경 지각이 조직의 보안정책준수에 미치는 영향

본 연구는 사회통제이론적 틀을 적용하여 조직구성원의 정보보안정책 준수에 영향을 미치는 변수들을 도출하고, 군 조직구성원의 정보보안 관련 태도와 의도에 영향을 미치는 요인들을 탐색한 것이다. 육군장교 195명을 대상으로 설문을 실시하여 윤리성향(도덕성, 책임감, 윤리교육의 가치)과 업무환경 (상사와의 관계, 업무과다, 임금만족)이 보안정책준수태도 및 의도와 이직의도에 미치는 영향을 PLS 구조방정식 모형으로 검증하였다. 연구 결과 윤리성향 요인은 보안정책준수태도에, 업무환경요인 (임금만족 제외)은 이직의도에 영향을 미치는 것으로 나타났다. 그리고 보안정책준수태도는 윤리성향과 보안정책준수의도를, 상사와의 관계와 보안정책준수의도를, 이직의도와 보안정책준수의도를 유의하게 매개하는 것으로 나타났다. 본 연구 결과는 윤리성향이 개인의 보안의식수준을 예측할 수 있는 변인이고, 보안정책준수태도가 조직 보안 맥락에서 주요한 변인임을 시사한다.

Factors in Information Assurance Professionals' Intentions to Adhere to Information Security Policies

Information security policies (ISPs) serve to clarify and formalize organizational information security practices and reduce data risks, but research shows that ISP noncompliance remains a prominent concern for both scholars and practitioners. This study utilized the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 (UTAUT2) to explore factors that predict information assurance professionals' behavioral intentions to comply with ISPs. The research question addressed: To what extent do performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, facilitating conditions, hedonic motivation, price value, and habit predict information assurance professionals' behavioral intention to comply with information security policies in organizations? A nonexperimental, cross-sectional research design using structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) addressed the research question with information assurance professionals in government agencies where habit emerged as the important component of ISP compliance with hedonic factors having a negative impact.

Managing Constraints in Role Based Access Control

Role-based access control (RBAC) is the most popular access control model currently adopted in several contexts to define security management. Constraints play a crucial role since they can drive the selection of the best representation of the organization's security policies when migrating towards an RBAC system. In this paper, we examine different types of constraints addressing both theoretical aspects and practical considerations. On one side, we define the constrained role mining problem for each constraint type, showing its complexity. On the other hand, we present efficient heuristics adapted to each class of constraints, all derived from the specialization of a general approach for role mining. We show that our techniques improve over previous proposals, offering a complete set of experimentations obtained after the application of the heuristics to standard real-world datasets.

Assessing the current state of information security policies in academic organizations

PurposeColleges and universities across the USA have seen data breaches and intellectual property theft rise at a heightened rate over the past several years. An integral step in the first line of defense against various forms of attacks are (written) security policies designed to prescribe the construction and function of a technical system, while simultaneously guiding the actions of individuals operating within said system. Unfortunately, policy analysis is an insufficiently discussed topic in many academic communities with very little research being conducted in this space.Design/methodology/approachThis work aims to assess the current state of information security policies by analyzing in-use policies from 200 universities and colleges in the USA with the goal of identifying important features and general attributes of these documents. The authors accomplish this through a series of analyzes designed to examine the language and construction of these policies.FindingsTo summarize high-level results, the authors found that only 54 per cent of the top 200 universities had publicly accessible information security policies, and the policies that were examined lacked consistency with little shared source material. The authors also found that the tonal makeup of these policies lacked a great deal of emotion, but contained a high amount of tentative or ambiguous language leading toward policies that could be viewed as “unclear.”Originality/valueThis work is an extension of a paper that was presented at ECIS 2018. The authors have added additional analyzes including a cross-policy content and tonal analysis to strengthen the findings and implications of this work for the wider research audience.

Security Policy Opt-in Decisions in Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) – A Persuasion and Cognitive Elaboration Perspective

ABSTRACTBring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) has gained increased popularity in organizations but may engender information security concerns. To address these concerns, employees are expected to opt-in and comply with organizational BYOD security policy. This study investigates the factors that affect employees’ opt-in decisions with BYOD security policy. Drawing on the theoretical lenses of persuasion and cognitive elaboration, we propose that employees’ cognitive elaborations of BYOD security policy could be affected by the valence of justification of the BYOD security policy, the stringency of BYOD security measures, and the sequence of the introduction of BYOD security policy in relation to employees’ use of personal devices to perform organizational tasks and such cognitive elaborations would in turn affect opt-in decisions. We conducted an experimental survey to test our propositions. The results indicate that positive BYOD security policy justification framing and post-task security policy exposure would lead to more positive cognitive elaboration, decision to opt-in, and compliance with the BYOD security policy. This research has significant implications for security management with respect to the design and implementation of BYOD security policy within an organization according to the nature of security policy and the task requirements.

Abductive innovations in information security policy development: an ethnographic study

ABSTRACTDeveloping organisational information security (InfoSec) policies that account for international best practices but are contextual is as much an opportunity for improving InfoSec as it is a challenge. Previous research indicates that organisations should create InfoSec policies based on best practices (top-down) and simultaneously encourages participatory development (bottom-up). These contradictory suggestions place managers in a dilemma: Should they follow a top-down or bottom-up approach? In this research, we build on an ethnographic approach to study how an innovative engineering company (MachineryCorp) managed the contradiction when the firm developed an InfoSec policy. Drawing on the dialectical theory of organisations as a lens, the findings suggest the InfoSec policy development is a recurrent process consisting of three phases: (1) drawing interpretations of InfoSec requirements from best practices (deductive adoption) and (2) constructing possibilities for local implementation (inductive adjustment) (3) that engender tensions between best practices and local contingencies facilitating innovative local resolutions (synthetic innovation). We call this process abductive innovation. At MachineryCorp, a triangle of tensions surfaced due to economic realities, infrastructure affordances, and social arrangements, and were necessary in explaining how the InfoSec policy gradually and iteratively materialised and resulted in an organisationally contingent policy.

Rethinking the Prevailing Security Paradigm

Information leakage is a major concern for organizations. As information travels through the organization's eco-system, perimeter-based defense is no longer sufficient. Rather, organizations are implementing data-centric solutions that persist throughout the information life-cycle regardless of its location. Enterprise rights management (ERM) systems are an example of persistent data-centric security. ERM defines specific access rules as an instantiation of organizational information security policies and has been suggested as means of role-based access permissions control. Yet, evidence shows that employees often circumvent or work around organizational security rules and policies since these controls hinder task-performance. In this exploratory case study, we use the theory of workarounds as a lens to examine users' workaround behavior. We introduce an empowerment-based ERM system highlighting users' permission to override provisionally assigned access rules. The concept of empowered security policies is novel and presents a shift in the current security compliance paradigm. Subsequently, we compare users' compliance intention between empowered ERM users and conventional ERM users. Our descriptive results indicate that circumventing intention is lower while perceived responsibility and task-performance benefits are higher for the empowered ERM users than for the conventional ERM users. Compliance intention is higher for conventional ERM users than for empowered ERM users.