An information asset priority evaluation method with analytic network process

Abstract

IT infrastructures are indispensable parts of today’s organizations, and keeping them secure is very important for successfully running the business. Due to the complexity of information infrastructure and network topology, traditional security measures no longer meet the security needs of current enterprises. Therefore, the holistic information security management analysis method has received extensive attention. An important task of these holistic security analysis methods is to analyze the value of assets so that IT managers can effectively allocate resources to protect the information infrastructure. Most of the current asset valuation methods are based on analyzing the dependencies between assets. In some cases, the dependencies are not easy to find, which makes the evaluation results inaccurate. Therefore, we propose model with analytic network process network (ANP) to evaluate the value of assets. This method not only considers the security factors and considers the importance of the assets to the business as well. It can evaluate the value of the assets and prioritize them, which can help the system administrator in making the decision for security enhancement.