Searching for the Right Fit: Balancing IT Security Management Model Trade-Offs

IT security professionals´ effectiveness in an organization is influenced not only by how usable their security management tools are but also by how well the organization´s security management model (SMM) fits. Finding the right SMM is critical but can be challenging - trade-offs are inherent to each approach, but their implications aren´t always clear. The authors present a case study of one academic institution that created a centralized security team but disbanded it in favor of a more distributed approach three years later. They contrast these experiences with expectations from industry standards.