The importance of return on investment in security in reducing risks

Abstract

In every public or private organization , each budget has to be justified and its effectiveness is often evaluated afterward. This valuation is named the return on investment or rate of return(ROI).This paper discussed Return On Investment  measure that applies to every investment inside an organization, and also it is used as a measure of organization’s performance, and it evinces that the typical approach for return on investment is not particularly for measuring security-related initiatives. Security is not mainly an investment that result in a profit, security is more about loss prevention . In other terms , when an organization  investments in security , it does not expect to benefit , it expects to reduce the risks threating its assets . With this approach, the quantitative assessment of the return on security investment is done by calculating how much loss that an organization avoided to its investment. This paper has attempted to discuss some of critical points of calculating return on security investment.  Especially, that the return on security on investment (ROSI) provides the basis for significant cost-benefit analysis of the risk reduction, and recently  it has become a debatable topic due to growth of E-Business .Defining the value of security investments is challenging , however , it is clear that organizations will need to understand the variables that defines return on security investment .Finally, this paper clearly showed that the return on security investment can be used to convince decision-makers to invest in security to achieve a proper reasonable security level throughout organization.