Information Security Management System: A “Must Have” for Your Business

The technological landscape is drastically changing. So is information security. With the increasing demand for stringent data protection, data breaches now cost small fortunes when an organization is compromised. For instance, the Equifax data breach case resulted in a 20 percent decline in the company`s stock prices and more than 30 class-action lawsuits filed within a month. One data breach is all it takes to get hit with regulatory penalties, fines, business lost, compensatory pay-outs, vulnerability mitigation and notifications costs.

Based on research sponsored by IBM security and conducted by Ponemon Institute, the average cost of a data breach globally was $3.86 million in 2018 which is a 6.4 percent increase from 2017. The cost of a mega-breach involving 50 million records was found to cost $350 million. Therefore, having an information security management system has ceased to be a “luxury” and has now become a “must have”.

An Information Security Management system is a set of policies, procedures, processes, protocols, and methodologies for managing sensitive data of an organization. It provides a system to protect the integrity, accessibility, and confidentiality of information assets from deliberate or accidental alterations, misuse, loss, or damage.

Effective security strategies have a balance of “hard aspects”, such as policies, procedures, tools, and methodologies along with “soft aspects” such as compliant company culture, stakeholder buy-in, and management commitment. To achieve the goals of security management, an organization must ensure effective implementation of its information security management systems by enforcing compliance into daily processes across the organization. Risk assessments are also a vital part of Security Management programs. They inform the likelihood of a breach and the impact of the breach for each type of risk. This entails that different controls must be implemented for different kinds of data sets. There is no set of one-size-fits-all security controls for data within an organization. Therefore, effective security strategies are risk-based.

Information security management is not a one-time program. Effective security programs follow the Plan-Do-Check-Act cycle. It is a continual approach to managing evolving information and aligning security controls to meet the rapidly changing technological landscape. For instance, with the rise in digital transformation more and more organizations are realizing the increasing need for cybersecurity. Therefore, the best security strategy is enforcing risk intelligent security programs which notify companies of emerging threats and adjust security capabilities accordingly.

I hope this gives some insight on the importance of information security management systems. Get more information and insight from our upcoming blogs, thank you.