A distributed cognition approach to integrate security management and business processes

Abstract

Virtually unlimited information dissemination in the age of the Internet has enabled novel ways to threaten companies. Relevant activities are taking place outside corporate spheres of influence which means that it may be difficult to become aware of activities happening online. In this paper, we argue that this task exceeds the traditional scope of security management and propose a distributed approach to account for the broad scope of the challenge. In particular, we argue for viewing organizations as distributed cognition systems as this provides a conceptual basis for integrating shared problem awareness and distributed threat recognition with regular business processes.