itsecurityandprivacy.docVIP

IT Security and Privacy IS 5800 – Dr. Mary Lacity Written by: Chad Keeven Brian Ledford Hai Lin Komsum Santiwiwatkul December 4th, 2006Executive Summary – IT Security and Privacy The following paper is a look into the ever-changing world of IT security. Today’s businesses rely on data obtained from their customers, research, and other companies. This data has to be kept secure in order to protect the interests of the business and their customers. The paper will look at threats and vulnerabilities in IT systems, both manmade and natural, the role the CSO can play in a corporation, ways businesses can work to keep themselves safe from outside attacks as well as internal threats, and what to do if disaster strikes. You will find this topic to be very important. It is a subject that is thought of often, but not always understood. Many in business today just expect that someone in the computer department takes care of IT security, but as we will show, individuals are just as responsible. Also, with the growing ability of outside attackers, businesses must be nimble and able to respond. With companies spending an average of 36% of their security budget and 7% - 8% of their overall IT budget toward technology, this is an important topic to understand. With the increase of e-business, downtime can be costly. Estimates vary, but downtime can cost a company from $1400 to $8000 per hour. This is not something that many companies can afford to lose. Downtime can also lead to permanent loss of customers and loss of the revenue they provide. The authors used many sources to obtain the information in this paper. Journal articles, surveys, books, and personal experiences were used to pull out relevant and recent data. Unfortunately, a lot of information, including hard financial costs, is not easy to ascertain, as it is hard to put a value on downtime and virus attacks. Also, with there not being a standard way of handling IT security, one companie