A Study on the Impact Analysis of Security Flaws between Security Controls: An Empirical Analysis of K-ISMS using Case-Control Study

The measurement of information security levels is a very important but difficult task. So far, various measurement methods have studied the development of new indices. Note, however, that researches have focused on the problem of attaining a certain level but largely neglecting research focused on the issue of how different types of possible flaws in security controls affect each other and which flaws are more critical because of these effects. Furthermore, applying the same weight across the board to these flaws has made it difficult to identify the relative importance. In this paper, the interrelationships among security flaws that occurred in the security controls of K-ISMS were analyzed, and the relative impact of each security control was measured. Additionally, a case-control study was applied using empirical data to eliminate subjective bias as a shortcoming of expert surveys and comparative studies. The security controls were divided into 2 groups depending on whether or not a security flaw occurs. The experimental results show the impact relationship and the severity among security flaws. We expect these results to be applied as good reference indices when making decisions on the removal of security flaws in an enterprise.