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Comprehensive Information Security Awareness (CISA) in Security Incident Management (SIM): A Conceptualization


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1 Information Technology & Systems Area, Indian Institute of Management Kashipur, Kundeshwari, Kashipur 244713, Uttarakhand, India
     

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Information security incidents are a major concern for organizations today, and the prevention and mitigation of such incidents are essential for business survival and smooth functioning. Organizations implement a security incident management process to detect and mitigate security incidents. Despite an organization’s investment and efforts to prevent security incidents, its occurrences have increased over the years, signaling limitations in the existing process. We posit that the limitations may be due to the lack of a comprehensive awareness of threats by security professionals. To this effect, we define and conceptualize Comprehensive Information Security Awareness (CISA) as comprising of three elements, namely: security, system, and situational awareness. We leverage the knowledge, skills, and abilities-based approach in NIST-SP-800-16 and security awareness concepts from the literature for conceptualizing CISA. We discuss the effects of CISA on threat management tasks in the context of security incident management.

Keywords

Information Security Awareness, Situation Awareness, System Awareness, Threat Detection, Threat Mitigation.
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  • Comprehensive Information Security Awareness (CISA) in Security Incident Management (SIM): A Conceptualization

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Authors

Manisekaran Thangavelu
Information Technology & Systems Area, Indian Institute of Management Kashipur, Kundeshwari, Kashipur 244713, Uttarakhand, India
Venkataraghavan Krishnaswamy
Information Technology & Systems Area, Indian Institute of Management Kashipur, Kundeshwari, Kashipur 244713, Uttarakhand, India
Mayank Sharma
Information Technology & Systems Area, Indian Institute of Management Kashipur, Kundeshwari, Kashipur 244713, Uttarakhand, India

Abstract


Information security incidents are a major concern for organizations today, and the prevention and mitigation of such incidents are essential for business survival and smooth functioning. Organizations implement a security incident management process to detect and mitigate security incidents. Despite an organization’s investment and efforts to prevent security incidents, its occurrences have increased over the years, signaling limitations in the existing process. We posit that the limitations may be due to the lack of a comprehensive awareness of threats by security professionals. To this effect, we define and conceptualize Comprehensive Information Security Awareness (CISA) as comprising of three elements, namely: security, system, and situational awareness. We leverage the knowledge, skills, and abilities-based approach in NIST-SP-800-16 and security awareness concepts from the literature for conceptualizing CISA. We discuss the effects of CISA on threat management tasks in the context of security incident management.

Keywords


Information Security Awareness, Situation Awareness, System Awareness, Threat Detection, Threat Mitigation.

References