The importance of information security and its challenges ...
With the increasing degree of digitalization and networking, companies are faced with fundamental challenges. Businesses face new threats to their security on a daily basis. Dynamic changes among workforce, technical environment, and means of collaboration among humans and machines challange current operations. Firms and employees need to learn how to operate under uncrtainty and how to minimise their risk exposure. Building up needed capabilities among the workforce is only a first step, but as experts are scarce on the labour market, especially smaller firms need to find new ways to akquire needed expertise.
The present questionnaire is built around this key problem – determining which competences are required to built up information security within an SME. Participate now in our online personnel questionnaire to determine competencies in the field of information security and identify learning gaps.
Both the growing number of IT systems, information-based business processes as well as the enormous variety of threats are increasing the importance of information security.
Information Security demands a large variety of skills, if it is to be implemented effectively. These high requirments make it very hard for companies to find suitable personnel, which is especially true for Small and Medium sized Enterprises (SMEs).
Due to the constantly changing requirements in the IT sector, learning and recognition of informal aspects is becoming a decisive factor in the area of information security as well.
Especially SMEs are subject to vastly different environments in comparison to large corporations: technological infrastructure, communication channels or legal obligations represent only a few factors which differiantiate the work of an information security officer in an SME from those working in larger firms. From this difference derives the conclusion that also the set of competence must be different which allows an employee to carry out tasks and responsibilities effectively.
Owners of Small and Medium sized Enterprises are often overwhelmed and mostly opt into contracting a service provider, which helps the firm to built up internal knowledge ressources in order to increase information security within the firm. Assigning this additional task to an internal employee brings up a central problem for the decision making: How do you determine the most suitable employee?
Many firms choose to hedge against their risk by purchasing an insurance policy against any possible damages in relation to information securty breaches. However, minimum requirments must be met by insurance takers in order to fulfill payout-conditions.
Your benefits of the survey...
Improve your Information Security
Improve the understanding of information security in your company and prepare yourself for the challenges of digitization and networking.
Determine your competences
The survey is designed to help you determine your current competencies in the area of information security.
Identify Gaps
The results of the survey allow you to assess what competences you need to improve on in order to achieve an appropriate level of security.
The Survey
In the following you can find several surveys which have been developed with the end to support SMEs across the EU to improve their information security by identifying the right personnel. The survey follows a two-pronged approach: on the one hand, it aims at identifying clusters of firms and shape out structural demand across sectors concerning the perceived need of information security experts from a strategic-organisational perspective. On the other hand, a dedicated curriculum has been developed and learning outcomes to enable the foundational implementation of information security strategies are being proposed. Experts and practitioners from the field are invited to assess the adequacy and the suitability of the suggested competence level.
Please note: the questionnaires are optimised for Chrome or Firefox. Other browsers might yield technical problems.
TeBeISi
Partial certification in the occupational field of information security
The project will help to promote the recognition and certification of qualifications and competences, including those acquired through non-formal and informal learning. The project aims at the transfer of these profiles including certification procedures to the European partner countries and their successful implementation in practice. The focus is on the validation of learning outcomes from non-formal and informal learning. This survey is part of the project.
How you can contact us...
If you have any questions please contact us by using the contact form.
This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication [communication] reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.