Volume 11, Number 6

Quality Assessment of Access Security Controls over Financial Information

  Authors

Angel R. Otero, Christian Sonnenberg and LuAnn Bean, Florida Institute of Technology, USA

  Abstract

Information security necessitates the implementation of safeguards to guarantee an adequate defense against attacks, threats, and breaches from occurring. Nonetheless, even with “adequate” defensive efforts, the taste for accessing sensitive and confidential financial information is too tempting, and attacks continue to escalate. Organizations must plan ahead so that identified attacks, threats, and breaches are appropriately managed to a successful resolution. A proven method to address information security problems is achieved through the effective implementation of access security controls. This paper proposes a quantitative approach for organizations to evaluate access security controls over financial information using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), and determines which controls best suit management’s goals and objectives. Through a case study, the approach is proven successful in providing a way for measuring the quality of access security controls over financial information based on multiple application-specific criteria.

  Keywords

Information Security, Access Security Controls, Internal Controls, Analytic Hierarchy Process, Pairwise Comparisons