Iterative incentive scheme for outsourced IA

IT infrastructure can be outsourced to contractors, including the primary responsibility for maintaining network security. Even though an outsourcing contract specifies the minimum level of performance, there is a need to motivate a contractor to further improve such performance. This paper discusses the outsourcing of information assurance (IA) at the Navy Marine Corps Intranet (NMCI) and proposes a model to motivate contractor to perform better using service level agreements (SLAs) and incentives as tools. The model uses an iterative process to overcome the problem of lack of information and serves as basis for data collection & metric development. Coincidentally, this situation exists in other assurance-related outsourcing endeavors such as homeland security.