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
All organizations and industries experience risk exposure, from both internal and external events. Accordingly, with outcome speculation being uncertain, organizations can experience either negative or positive effects. In general, the IS31000 defines risk as the “effect of uncertainty on objects” (Elliott, 2012 p.1.4). Consequently, the application of risk management practices helps minimize the effects of risk uncertainty on an organization and is accomplished through coordinating an organization’s activities by establishing control and creating policies in regards to risk. Risk’s most evident category is hazard risk which encompasses risk from accidental loss. In addition, operational risk stems from controls,
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
Implement physical security: - “Physical security protects people, data, equipment, systems, facilities and company assets” (Harris,
As electronic commerce, online business-to-business operations, and global connectivity have become vital components of a successful business strategy, enterprises have adopted security processes and practices to protect information assets. But if you look at today's computing environments, system security is a horrible game of numbers: there are currently over 9,223 publicly released vulnerabilities covering known security holes in a massive range of applications from popular Operating Systems through to obscure and relatively unknown web applications. [01] Over 300 new vulnerabilities are being discovered and released each month. Most companies work diligently to maintain an efficient, effective security policy, implementing the latest products and services to prevent fraud, vandalism, sabotage, and denial of service attacks. But the fact is you have to patch every hole of your system, but an attacker need find only one to get into your environment. Whilst many organisations subscribe to major vendor's security alerts, these are just the tip of the security iceberg and even these are often ignored. For example, the patch for the Code Red worm was available some weeks before the worm was released. [02]
A firewall is a network device, hardware, software, or a combination of the two, whose purpose is to enforce a security policy across its connections. It is comparable to a wall that has a window where the wall serves to keep things out, except those permitted through the window. A security policy acts like the glass in the window; it permits some things to pass, light, while blocking others, air. The heart of a firewall is the security policy that it enforces.
A security manager position is one of the most important jobs that you will find in any organization today. Recent events over the past few decades, have called for more re-amped security measures and procedures throughout facilities. The demand for this position was not the same as it was, twenty or thirty years ago. However, not every company operates on the same level and the position of a security manager may differ from company to company.
Principle of Security Management by Brian R. Johnson, Published by Prentice-Hall copyright 2005 by Pearson Education, Inc.
Risk management is defined by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as “the process of identifying, analyzing, assessing, and communicating risk and accepting, avoiding, transferring or controlling it to an acceptable level considering associated costs and benefits of any actions taken” (DHS 2010a, p. 30). Raymond Decker, Director of Defense Capabilities and Management testified on behalf of the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) before the Subcommittee on National Security, Veteran’s Affairs, and International Relations; House Committee of Government Reform, and further described risk management as the “systematic and analytical process to consider the likelihood that a threat will endanger an asset,
Lesson 1 Roles and Responsibilities of the Proprietary Security Officer The objective of this lesson is to familiarize and instruct the individual on the roles and responsibilities of proprietary security officers and employers. In particular, the lesson will outline the difference between proprietary security officers and private citizens, as well as identify specific job performance criteria and duties for security officers. Topic objectives covered will include: • Examining the Role of a Proprietary Security Officer • Understanding the Duties and Responsibilities of the Job • Defining the Characteristics of Service Oriented Security • Comparing the Role of a Proprietary Security Officer with that of Private Citizens • Understanding Authority
A firewall refers to device that blocks certain type of information between trusted and untrusted networks. A firewall as the name suggests it behaves like a wall from unsafe environment. It controls all incoming and outgoing traffic in a network. There are different types of firewall depending on where they are used:-
Nowadays, the information is the most treasured asset in an organization, due to it along with the experience represents the input necessary to take appropriate decisions and consequently to have success in the business. Almost all the information and knowledge related with the processes business, goods and services offered by a company, is processed, managed and stored through technology and information systems, thus the security of information has become increasingly important and plays a critical role in the enterprise government.
Describe how information assets are identified as exposed to risk, and how risk is identified and evaluated. Objectives are to place control measure to reduce specific vulnerabilities. Defining control objectives is the first step in deriving the corresponding control requirements to mitigate the risk associated with the vulnerability.
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.