Building a Cybersecurity Compliance Index of Capabilities to Explore Strategies and Trends That Enhance Decision Making in Organizations
Decision-makers and company executives are required to provide authoritative and transparent information on behalf of their organizations. In securing an organization’s assets, decision-makers use the Global Cybersecurity Index (GCI) as a framework to understand cyber compliance. Although the GCI framework has been used across broad domains both domestically and internationally, the framework is considered too broad to help decision-makers in business settings gain the information needed to address the challenges of cyber compliance influencing an organization’s leadership. A key challenge is that decision-makers must often address a class of problems requiring classes of artifacts or tools, rather than a single problem. This study was aimed at improving cybersecurity leadership decisions by developing a Cybersecurity Compliance Index (CCI) to explore strategies and trends to enhance decision-making in organizations. The CCI model was based on key elements from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Framework for improving critical infrastructure cybersecurity and the Global Index Framework Standards. The Design Science Research (DSR) approach was used to design the proposed CCI framework. The DSR was considered appropriate because it enables the creation and evaluation of artifacts to solve immediate problems faced by decision-makers. The proposed CCI framework was evaluated in a select population specifically involved in business decision-making within the defense industrial base sector. Findings from the study may provide strategies for decision-makers to implement cybersecurity standards that are critical and appropriate for theory.
Global Cybersecurity Index, Design Science Research, CCI framework, Organization, Business, Management Information Systems
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