The business world is increasingly reliant on technology to supply information and communications facilities to staff, partners, and customers. Securing organizational information and the systems that are used to manage and transmit data has become a high profile function. Failure to secure information can have a severe impact on business credibility.
Threats to an organization come in a variety of forms, for example from hacking, viruses, and simple human error. The types of threats change constantly, so management must sponsor, design, and implement business and technical processes to safeguard critical business assets. To create a more secure business environment the organization must:
Assess business exposure and identify which assets to secure.
Identify ways to reduce risk to an acceptable level.
Design a plan for mitigating security risks.
Monitor the efficiency of security mechanisms.
Re-evaluate effectiveness and security requirements regularly.
All of these activities must be coordinated within a well-defined strategy. An organization can manage risk to an acceptable level by developing security policies and making staff and commercial partners aware of their responsibilities within them. Security can also contribute to an organization's bottom line, because customers value the reliability of a supplier.
This Security Management service management function (SMF) guides organization leaders and senior managers through issues that they should consider when developing an effective security policy and implementing it through a security program. The SMF discusses the individual and team security roles and their interrelationship with operational functions. The SMF also reviews tactics a...
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...eptable level. When a risk is identified, the organization must assess its potential impact, prioritize its importance, identify the options for managing the risk, and assess the business value of introducing a mitigating control. Specifically, controls are security tools, programs, policies, restrictions, and other methods used to mitigate identified risks.
Examples of controls include such elements as:
Documented processes and procedures to manage security incidents.
An intrusion prevention system.
The configuration of security options and settings for systems or applications.
A firewall is an example of an intrusion prevention system. After identifying and assessing the risk associated with unauthorized external access to an internal network, a technician can configure a firewall to segregate one portion of a network from another, allowing
During the process of analyzing an organizations effectiveness to manage cybersecurity risks, there are ranges of security policies that need to be implemented. A prime example of this concept is the cybersecurity policies developed for consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton. The direct division formed to address the firm’s requirements within cyberspace is the Cyber Solution Network (CSN). The CSN division within Booz Allen Hamilton has a range of policies used to ensure the firm is protected against risk.
Whitman, M., & Mattord, H. (2010). Management of information security. (3rd ed., p. 6). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.
Security helps the organization meet its business objectives or mission by protecting its physical and financial resources, reputation, legal position, employees, and other tangible and intangible assets through the selection and application of appropriate safeguards. Businesses should establish roles and responsibilities of all personnel and staff members. However, a Chief Information Officer should be appointed to direct an organization’s day to day management of information assets. Supporting roles are performed by the service providers and include systems operations, whose personnel design and operate the computer systems. Each team member must be held accountable in ensuring all of the rules and policies are being followed, as well as, understanding their roles, responsibilities and functions. Organizations information processing systems are vulnerable to many threats that can inflict various types of damage that can result in significant losses (Harris, 2014). Losses can come from actions from trusted employees that defraud the system, outside hackers, or from careless data entry. The major threat to information protection is error and omissions that data entry personnel, users, system operators and programmers make. To better protect business information resources, organizations should conduct a risk analysis to see what
The article “Security at Center Stage” depicts five secrets to a CSO’s success; it outlines the attributes needed to obtain success in the evolving field of security management. With the evolving role of a CSO there is a great necessity to satisfy all levels of need in the security and business setting. According to the article “Security at Center Stage” a CSO’s success is contingent on being “more that the average techie”, having a “focus on business”, being a “relationship builder”, requiring “an eye toward pervasive security”, and implementing a “dual reporting structure.”
The intensity and depth of an organization's security policy depends heavily on the nature of their business. A large company compared to a small company would require a different approach to their security policy. Also, the type of information that the company dea...
Implement physical security: - “Physical security protects people, data, equipment, systems, facilities and company assets” (Harris,
Issues that will fall under this umbrella will be management accountability, fiscal liability, internal and external audits and protection of stockholder and stakeholder interests” (Fisher, 2004). An area of concern for both customers and vendors will be how well the organization can protect the information system that houses secured information such as a customer’s financial institution, bank routing numbers and account numbers. The same will apply to a vendor’s need of protection. If an organizations electronic accounting data base where to be hacked into and the information were to fall into the wrong hands, a company could be destroyed financially. An organization’s performance review also plays a vital role in the homeland security assessment. In conducting a review on this level I will obtain information as to “how the senior leaders translate organizational performance review findings into priorities for continuous and breakthrough improvement of key business results and into opportunities for innovation” (Fisher,
Business owners will go to amazing lengths to keep their workplace safe while completely overlooking their IT security and their multifunction devices. IT security breaches cost the average company $800,000 in 2009 (Tattrie, 2009). Those figures represent a 97 percent increase from 2008. The $800,000 includes labor lost when a breach freezes systems, cost of repairing the damage caused by the breach, and the cost of replacing the faulty security. That is quite a large sum that is also highly avoidable. Due to escalation in Internet use, the amount of computer security breaches that businesses have experienced in the last year has increased at a rapid rate. Breaches can come from external attacks as well as within the walls of a company. External attacks are serious but the threat created by a company’s employees can be much worse (Robb, 2010). Last year 81 percent of security breaches came from inside the company. Employees can cause deliberate attacks, but more likely employee use can compromise your system without malice and unknowingly. Employees can abuse internet access privileges by downloading pornography, downloading music, and pirating software. Obviously, this is improper use of company time and resources but more importantly, it can expose your company to fines from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) and it also can make your computer network more vulnerable to access from outside troublemakers and industry spies. BSA has collected more than $70 million in penalties from companies where employees violated piracy laws.
Today process and technology alone can’t assure a secure organizational atmosphere. To compromise a satisfactorily secure organization, cybersecurity polices and procedures are inaugurated and expertise within an
Incident response is usually one of those security areas that tend to be impromptucompanies don't think about it until they have to. But that needs to change. In this paper I will discuss five steps - identification, containment, eradication, and recovery and follow up a business use to effectively response to a security threat and I will suggest four actions -use encryption and passwords, e-mail protection, install antivirus software, install workstation firewalls a businesses can take to effectively prevent a security incident in the future.
Principle of Security Management by Brian R. Johnson, Published by Prentice-Hall copyright 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc.
According to the information security governance, success is often less, due to inability to value the the organisation 's information and data. This creates the discussion on the needs for security and the resources to be assigned to this.
The purposes of these security policies include protecting employees, clients and data; setting guidelines and rules for users; roles and limitations of human re; administrators and security personnel responsibilities and defining the consequences for breaking the policies set. According to Canavan and Diver (2007), organizational policies can also define the company consensus baseline stance on security to minimize risk and track the compliance level with regulations and
The first thing that we must consider about Information Security is that there is not a final destination at which we can arrive. IT Security is an ongoing set of processes and activities that requires attention and expertise on a daily basis. It is important to understand that systems are not secured by themselves and it is our responsibility to maintain and improve them periodically as required. It is of vital importance to establish the appropriate mechanisms and requirements in order to support the company’s CIA triad. The following report will provide you guidance about auditing and hardening techniques applied though the 7 Domains by utilizing IT Security Best Practices.
This report aim to explain how is achieved risk control through strategies and through security management of information.