IFN600: IT Security Challenges and Solutions in the Digital Market

This report addresses the significant IT security challenges facing organizations in today's digital landscape. It begins by highlighting the increasing digitization of data and the critical need for robust data management practices to protect against malicious attacks and unauthorized access. The report emphasizes the persistent threat of data breaches, using examples like the Bank of Queensland, ASUS, and Melbourne Hospital to illustrate the real-world impact of these vulnerabilities. It explores how emerging trends like IoT and Industrie 4.0 are becoming prime targets for cyberattacks due to the sensitive nature of the data they generate and exchange. The report also examines the challenges posed by fog computing and its potential impact on IT security. The study then poses three key research questions: How can collaboration among organizations enhance cybersecurity? What is the role of innovation in strengthening IT security? And how can cooperation with government authorities improve security? The methodology involves a mixed-methods approach, including qualitative and quantitative data collection through interviews, questionnaires, and sampling, to analyze the impact of collaboration and innovation on data security. The report concludes by emphasizing the importance of proactive measures, collaboration, and innovation in mitigating IT security risks and protecting sensitive data.

Running Head: IT SECURITY 1
IT security in the market today is the major challenge to organizations in the market today
Author’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
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Problem Statement
In the modern world, most organizations have digitized their data. Data management is a
fundamental area in Information Technology that is focused on protecting against malicious
attacks or from unauthorized access. In data management organizations are required to secure its
data and structure access and storage. It further demands that organization create data security,
data source identification, segregation, storage, database management system, data analysis, data
architecture and data governance policies (Li, Meng, & Kwok, 2016). With coming investing so
heavily in data management, IT security still remains the biggest challenge in the 21st century.
In Australia, many organizations such as Bank of Queensland, ASUS, and Melbourne Hospital
have continued to experience data breaches after even assuring their customers of stable and
reliable IT security.
IT security experts are putting their significant efforts in ensuring that organizations do
not suffer malicious digital attacks. They have been implementing and managing security
software, upgrading systems, and scanning for any abnormalities. With all these services
provided, data breaches continue to spike. According to Sadeghi, Wachsmann, & Waidner,
(2015) current trends and initiatives like IoT (Internet of Things) and “Industrie 4.0” have
become targets for cyber attacks. Authors add that these trends and initiatives are promising
innovative business models, excellent user experience by offering reliable, strong connectivity
and proper utilization of next generation of implanted devices. Equally, systems such as IoT and
“Industrie 4.0” produce, generate and exchange data that is confidential, private and sensitive.
Due to the nature or sensitivity of the data generated by the systems, cyber attackers are targeting
them maliciously (DiMase, Collier, Heffner, & Linkov, 2015). Ideally, the argument is that
today, IT security is under threat in the tech market. Organizations handling vast amounts of

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critical data are worried about digital malicious attacks which can strike anytime especially if
they are not prepared enough to counter such attacks.
The health care system is one sensitive area that if not offered strong IT security,
sensitive information of patients shall be exposed. In the research conducted by Sametinger,
Rozenblit, Lysecky, & Ott, (2015) it was observed that medical devices are on the radar of cyber
attackers due to their sensitivity. The cyber attackers or hackers usually raid organizations that
have sensitive information so that when data breach succeeds, their impact can be felt. According
to the researchers and analysts, health care is one sector with experiencing rising interoperability
of medical devices and reliance on software and internet are putting health records of patients at
stake. Take the example of Melbourne Hospital, which was attacked in February 2019. The
cybercrime syndicate is said to have accessed health records of 15, 00 patients (Webber
Insurance Services, 2019). The Melbourne Heart Clinic suffered a ransomware attack. In all
probability, the attackers must have assessed the sensitivity of the health records at the facility
before launching the cyber raid. In all probability, the attack put the lives of innocent patients at
stake. There is no patient that will want their private information to be disclosed to the public
without their consent. More importantly, the data breach at Melbourne Hospital in Australia
reveals the IT security challenges a majority of organizations are facing. The cyber attackers
sometimes seem to be ahead of the IT security team of some companies. For instance, in the case
of Melbourne Hospital, a warning was issued about the impending attack. Unfortunately, there
was no swift action to block the malicious attack.
Business organizations are using fog computing paradigm to extend computing facilities,
networking and storage of cloud computing to the edge of networks (Mukherjee, Matam, Shu,
Maglaras, Ferrag, Choudhury, & Kumar, (2017). Fog computing does this as it offloads cloud

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data centers as well as decrease service latency to the end users. However, according to
Mukherjee et al., (2017) the organizations relying on cloud computing are likely to experience IT
security challenges because the system can be attacked because of large-scale geo-distribution,
mobility or heterogeneity. Fog computing transfers data to far and different geographical
locations, hence creating a risk of attack. It is no doubt that there are businesses in Australia and
other countries worldwide that are relying on fog computing. If necessary IT security is not put
in place, the data is likely to be compromised and this would attract a major data breach.
Research Questions
The study will focus on the following research questions:
How can collaboration among organizations on addressing IT security challenges enhance
cybersecurity?
In what ways will innovation play a crucial role in supporting and strengthening IT security?
Given that large-scale cyber attacks on a country are a national security threat, how shall
cooperation with the relevant government authorities on intelligence enhance IT security in
organizations?
By answering these research questions, organizations will see the need to collaboratively
work to address IT security challenges and cases of data breaches occurring. It has become
increasingly important for organizations whether profit or non-profit to prop up their data
management to protect customers’ data (Peltier, 2016). Therefore, by answering these research
questions, organizations will acknowledge that they have a core and legal obligation to protect
the data of their clients. By addressing these research questions, organizations will learn that data

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will be managed effectively if the IT security system is manned by diligent and competent IT or
software engineers. Given that the cyber attackers are as knowledgeable and skillful as IT or
software as engineers, companies or businesses should encourage innovativeness, proactive
approaches and cooperation with other relevant authorities in order to secure the vast amount of
data they are handling (Shafqat, & Masood, 2016). Hence, this study will seek to investigate and
explain how cooperation and increased innovation in IT security can enhance data security/
management of organizations.
To address, these three research questions mixed methods approach shall be used. This
approach will use both qualitative and quantitative methods to address the research questions.
Methods of data collections such as interviews, questionnaires, and sampling shall be employed
(Palinkas, Horwitz, Green, Wisdom, Duan, & Hoagwood, 2015). The methods of data collection,
will both offer qualitative and quantitative data which will be analyzed in relation to the research
questions. For the first research question, the type of sampling that shall be used in this research
is purposeful sampling. Palinkas et al., (2015) state that purposeful sampling is commonly used
in qualitative research to identify and select information-cases associated with the phenomenon
of under study. Based on this description, purposeful sampling shall be used to analyze the cases
where collaboration in IT security has enabled organizations to improve their data security. In
addition, the second and third research questions shall use interviews, questionnaires, and
sampling to collect information that will be qualitatively be analyzed. In this case, random
sampling, semi-structured interviews, and questionnaires will be used at different stages to
collect data. Once data is collected, it will then be discussed and analyzed qualitatively and
quantitatively.
Question comparison

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Answering the first research question shall be easy, given that many organizations are
collaborating on IT security. They are sharing knowledge; innovations and important intelligence
that are helping them thwart, detect or report imminent cyber attacks (Carr, 2016). Sampling the
real cases of organizations will inform sufficiently, the importance of collaboration on IT
security. The advantage of answering this research question is that it will help other
organizations to see the need for cooperating on issues like data management/security. On the
flip side, trust and privacy concerns are likely to arise since organizations partnering on IT
security are likely to transfer data management to the third parties. The second and research
questions will be answered collectively because they will use similar methods of data collection
such as interviews, questionnaires, and sampling. Nevertheless, the third research question has
the most impact on the research problem. It is the most sensitive research question that will
require investigating the role of the intelligence team in countering cyber attacks and sharing
intelligence.

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References
Carr, M. (2016). Public–private partnerships in national cyber-security strategies. International
Affairs, 92(1), 43-62.
DiMase, D., Collier, Z. A., Heffner, K., & Linkov, I. (2015). Systems engineering framework for
cyber physical security and resilience. Environment Systems and Decisions, 35(2), 291-300.
Mukherjee, M., Matam, R., Shu, L., Maglaras, L., Ferrag, M. A., Choudhury, N., & Kumar, V.
(2017). Security and privacy in fog computing: Challenges. IEEE Access, 5, 19293-19304.
Li, W., Meng, W., & Kwok, L. F. (2016). A survey on OpenFlow-based Software Defined
Networks: Security challenges and countermeasures. Journal of Network and Computer
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Palinkas, L. A., Horwitz, S. M., Green, C. A., Wisdom, J. P., Duan, N., & Hoagwood, K. (2015).
Purposeful sampling for qualitative data collection and analysis in mixed method implementation
research. Administration and Policy in Mental Health and Mental Health Services Research,
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Peltier, T. R. (2016). Information Security Policies, Procedures, and Standards: guidelines for
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(DAC) (pp. 1-6). IEEE.

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Sametinger, J., Rozenblit, J. W., Lysecky, R. L., & Ott, P. (2015). Security challenges for
medical devices. Commun. ACM, 58(4), 74-82.
Shafqat, N., & Masood, A. (2016). Comparative analysis of various national cyber security
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Webber Insurance Services. (2019). The complete list of data breaches in Australia for 2018 and
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