Managing IT Security In Organizations : A look at Physical and Administrative Controls

Abstract: Introduction Information technology security or computing system security is one of the most impor-tant issues that businesses all over the world strive to deal with. However, the world has now changed and in essential ways. The desk-top computer and workstation have appeared and proliferated widely. The net effect of all this has been to expose the computer-based information system, i.e. its hardware, its software, its software processes, its databases, its communications to an environment over which no one—not end user, not network admin-istrator or system owner, not even government—has control. Purpose Since IT security has a very broad spectrum and encompasses a lot of issues, we want to focus our research by taking a critical look at how business organizations manage IT secu-rity with specific emphasis on administrative and physical controls. Methods When the authors of this paper approached the topic to be studied it soon became evident that the most relevant and interesting task was not merely to investigate how business and non business organizations manage their IT security, but in fact try to understand what lies behind them. The purpose of this paper demands a deeper insight of how organizations address the issue of computer security; the authors wanted to gain a deeper understanding of how security issues have been addressed or being tackled by the organizations. Thus, the qualitative method was most suitable for this study. Conclusion Based on the chosen approach, the result of this study has shown that both business and non-business organizations located in Jönköping recognize the importance of IT security, and are willing to protect their systems from threats such as unauthorized access, theft, fire, power outage and other threats to ensure the smooth running of their systems at all times.