The impact of business-IT alignment on information security process

Abstract

Business-IT Alignment (BITA) has the potential to link with organizational issues that deal with business-IT relationships at strategic, tactical and operational levels. In such context, information security process (ISP) is one of the issues that can be influenced by BITA. However, the impact has yet not been researched. This paper investigates the BITA impact on ISP. For this investigation, the relationships of elements of the Strategic Alignment Model and the components of Security Values Chain Model are considered. The research process is an in-depth literature survey followed by case study in two organizations located in United States and the Middle East. The results show clear impact of BITA on how organizations would distribute allocated security budget and resources based on the needs and risk exposure. The results should support both practitioners and researchers to gain improved insights of the relationships between BITA and IT security components. © 2014 Springer International Publishing.