An information security program is essential regardless of the size and industry you are in. Find out here why and how to develop one.
A great information security program’s policies are comprehensive. Furthermore, its policies and procedures are essential to your organization. That is whatever information you hold. Such information includes protected health information (PHI), personally identifiable information (PII), or any other proprietary information.
Hence, you need a fully developed information security program. It will protect whatever information you hold.
What Is An Information Security Program?
In simple words, it consists of security measures your organization designs and implements. Those measures are to protect sensitive data. Furthermore, the program recognizes factors that could affect the security of your data. Such factors include people, processes, and technology. Moreover, your program must ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data.
Hence, your program must protect crucial IT assets and business processes. The security measures included in this program are meant to mature over time. Moreover, the program also ensures that you continuously comply with regulatory requirements and customer standards.
Why Is It Important?
This is more crucial than ever. Hackers are more determined to steal your data. Furthermore, they use sophisticated methods to hack your systems. Furthermore, there are laws and regulations that mandate information security (infosec). Failure to comply with such laws could mean heavy fines or worse, business closures. Your reputation will also receive great damage.
As we have mentioned earlier, you must ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data. In short, C.I.A. Let’s take a brief look at those three.
Confidentiality
It’s vital that unauthorized people won’t access your data. Hence, your organization must restrict access to only authorized individuals. Several simple yet effective measures you could use are:
- Encryption
- Two-factor authentication
- Unique user IDs
- Strong passwords, etc.
Integrity
This means that you must protect your data from any unauthorized modification or alteration. You must ensure that the information is accurate and authentic. Watch file permissions and access controls closely to protect the integrity of information.
Availability
This means that employees and customers can easily access critical assets such as services and information. Furthermore, developing a disaster recovery plan is a great way to maintain availability. Moreover, perform regular back-ups to avoid compromising the availability of data.
The Foundation of a Healthy Information Security Program
Your information security program must have multiple components and sub-programs. Doing so ensures that your company’s security efforts are in harmony with your business objectives. Have the following four characteristics in your program development.
- Establish a bar or benchmark for security. This will be the existing state of your program.
- Measure against the benchmark. Of course, you need to see if your efforts are successful. In the future, compare your benchmark with the past benchmark. This will help you see if your efforts head on the right path.
- Key stakeholders must be well-informed before making changes to the program. Hence, ensure that the communication system is in place and open.
- Support the execution of decisions. Regularly track the progress of your efforts and their results.
