Today's Action is Better than Tomorrow's Cure - Evaluating Information Security at a Premier Indian Business School

Information Security breaches today affect a large number of organizations including universities, globally. They pose an immense threat to the C-I-A (confidentiality, integrity and availability) of information. Hence, it is important to have proper Information Security Management System (ISMS) designed in accordance with industry adopted standards for risk management. The current case explores the IT infrastructure at a premier Indian business school where internet support is required round the clock. The entire ISMS framework of the organization, including security policy, security budget and network components, is described. Though the security infrastructure apparently seemed to be adequate, a spate of hacking attacks targeted at the SMTP server attempted to cripple the extremely crucial email services for the period of the attack by generating spam. The primary security challenges facing the organization including nature and appropriateness of ISMS, adequacy of the security policy, budget allocation for IT security, etc., are left open for discussion.