Toward an Integrated Framework of Corporate Knowledge Portals Vulnerabilities: Resolving KM Security Challenges

Recently, knowledge management (KM) has been considered as a strategic weapon in a competitive environment. Corporate knowledge portals are one of the popular KM mechanisms for managing organisational knowledge and implementing knowledge management systems (KMSs) which use the communication networks. Since these portals are one of the main sources of organisational knowledge, their security becomes more essential. Despite the importance of the knowledge portal security, there are few studies to identify and evaluate the vulnerabilities of knowledge portals. The main purpose of this study is to offer an integrated framework to recognise, categorise and prioritise the key knowledge portal vulnerabilities based on the ITU-TX-805 architecture in order to enhance the security of KMSs. To identify the knowledge portal vulnerabilities, related studies were reviewed and then using the survey method, the main categories and related items were weighted by KM experts. The results proposed a new framework for identifying and prioritising knowledge portal vulnerabilities by using ITU-TX-805 architecture. The framework contains three main categories of vulnerabilities such as network components, network activities, and network security dimensions. In KM initiatives implementation, knowledge sharing along with knowledge protection must be considered. The proposed framework identifies and prioritizes the main vulnerabilities of knowledge portals which must be considered to make secure knowledge sources. It can assist knowledge manager officers (CKOs) to identify vulnerabilities, strengthen the security of knowledge portals, and protect knowledge assets.