Management of operational risks related to information security in financial organizations

Abstract: Date: 30th May 2010 Authors: Rajia Rafique, Furhan Mehmood Tutor: Dr. Michael Le Duc, Dr. Deepak Gupta Title: Management of Operational Risks related to Information Security in Financial Organizations Introduction: Information security is very significant for organizations, especially for financial organizations where customer information and their satisfaction are considered the most important assets for financial organizations. Therefore customer information must be sustained from information security breaches in order to satisfy customers. Financial organizations use their customer’s information several times a day to deal with different operations. These operations contain several types of risks. Operational risks related to information security are becoming sensational for financial organizations. Financial organizations concentrate to reduce the exposure of operational risk related to information security because these risks can affect the business to a great extent. Financial organizations need such policies and techniques which can be used to reduce the exposure of operational risk and to enhance information security. Several authors discuss about several types of operational risk related to information security, and several authors discuss about the techniques to avoid these risks in order to enhance information security. Problem: Investigate the concept of Operational Risks related to Information Security and how it is perceived in Financial Organization? Purpose: The aspiration of writing this report is to describe and analyze operational risks related to information security in financial organizations and then to present some suggestions in form of polices or techniques which can be used by financial organizations to enhance their information security. Method: Since the type of our thesis is Qualitative based, therefore exploratory research approach is used to carry out research. Authors tried to use secondary source of information as well as primary source of information in order to get maximum knowledge about the topic and to come up with maximum possible output. Target Audience The target audience in our mind for this paper consists of both, academic readers and professionals who have interest and some knowledge about information security and operational risks. Target audience for this research work includes professionals, academic readers and both investigated organizations (NCCPL and CDC). Conclusion By critically analyzing the literature written by various authors and the worthy information provided by our primary sources gave us the opportunity to develop a solution to keep the operations secure from risks and to fix the current problems related to information security. We found that there are different types of operational risks related to information security which can affect the business of financial organizations and there are various techniques which can be used by financial organizations to solve the current issue related to operational risks in order to enhance information security. It was also found that top management in financial organizations is interested in issues about information security operational risk and they showed their keen interest in adopting new effective techniques. Keywords: Information Security, Information Security Risks, Operational Risks, Operational Risk Management, Operational Risks in Financial Organizations.