Evaluation of the national information security policy by analytic hierarchy process

ABSTRACT Recent cybersecurity reports show that Brazil is one of the countries with the highest number of cybercrimes, affecting more than 60 million people and causing losses estimated at more than 20 billion dollars. Within the scope of the Public Administration, the National Information Security Policy (PNSI) assigned to the Institutional Security Office of the Presidency (GSI/PR) the task of monitoring and evaluating its execution, stimulating the broad participation of society and agencies and public authorities in the construction of the process, which includes the academic effort. To contribute to this context, this research analyzed different reference models, whose structure best suited the needs of the institutions evaluated and a quantitative method capable of objectively indicating the weight of the various variables in the model. The maturity model chosen was the CSF-NIST and the method selected was the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), for weighting the criteria and sub criteria. A case study illustrates the application of the selected model and method, indicating “how” to implement them, considering the specificities of the evaluated institution.