A Hybrid Tabu Genetic Metaheuristic for Selection of Security Controls

In the modern world, globalization has made way for easy access to information systems for running businesses effectively. The misuse of information systems may lead to loss of productivity, revenue, and sometimes to legal liabilities. Therefore, information security is a major concern for running the business successfully. It is the responsibility of the information security personnel of an organization to develop strategies, and identify the suitable controls to mitigate the risks to which the organization is exposed to. Selection of a suitable set of security controls depends upon, the risks to be addressed, the impact of the risks in terms of revenue, and the cost incurred in implementing the selected controls. To assist in the selection of optimal security controls a hybrid intelligent approach combining the tabu search technique and genetic algorithm has been proposed. The obtained results prove that the proposed approach provides better results in the selection of optimal counter measures.