DEVELOPMENT OF THE INFORMATION SECURITY SYSTEM FOR SMALL BUSINESS ENTITIES

The study is devoted to the issues of ensuring information security for small business entities. The article highlights the theoretical and methodological foundations for the development of an information security system for small enterprises in the context of economic digitalization and the growing intensity of cyber threats. The relevance of the research is driven by the need to create effective protective mechanisms under conditions of limited access to financial, technological, and human resources typical for small businesses. In today’s digital environment, information assets are becoming a strategic resource, and their protection is regarded as both a technical and managerial task that requires a systematic approach. The construction of an adaptive, scalable, and efficient information security system gains particular importance in the context of enterprises’ strategic resilience and competitiveness. The study explores the theoretical foundations of information security architecture development, taking into account international standards, the specifics of small business operations, and modern risk management approaches. Special attention is paid to the interrelation of technical, organizational, and human resource aspects of security system functioning, as well as to the necessity of integrating modern technologies for monitoring, authentication, backup, and analytics. The feasibility of building a structural-component framework for the information security system is substantiated, considering the functional segmentation of subsystems, threat typologies, and scalability options. Furthermore, the article addresses the formalization of security policies and the enhancement of personnel awareness as key elements in mitigating the human factor. An adapted TOGAF-based approach is proposed for the strategic design of the information security architecture, enabling the formalization of security policy implementation under the resource constraints of small businesses and ensuring its alignment with the dynamic digital environment. The proposed approach serves as a foundation for systematizing information security management practices.