Build Up Cybersecurity Governance for Your Organization Success

As threats to cyber security become increasingly sophisticated and unpredictable, organizations shall address risks that might arise. However, many organizations are struggled to maintain their cybersecurity governance. In many cases, internal and external governance mechanisms that directly impact cybersecurity are either neglected or managed ineffectively which has resulted a significant increase in financial and operational risk for business enterprises.

Key Steps to Grow and Sharpen Cybersecurity Governance

Cybersecurity was managed by implementing solutions to solve problems or mitigate risks. Many organizations manage cyber security through technical security protections, such as firewalls or intrusion detection. However, they often lack the governance processes. Cybersecurity governance refers to the organization governance components that addresses dependence on cyberspace in the presence of the adversaries.

There are six steps that could help organization grow and sharpen their cybersecurity governance. First, establish the current state by completing a cyber-risk assessment and maturity assessment. Then, create, review, or update all cybersecurity policies, standards, and processes. After that, approach cybersecurity from an enterprise lens; understand data that needs to be protected and how cyber risks aligned with enterprise risk management.

Furthermore, to strengthen cybersecurity governance, organization should also increase cybersecurity awareness and conduct cybersecurity training for employees, as well as perform cyber risk analysis by creating risk model, and consider all risks to organizations’ external, internal, and third party. Lastly, strong cybersecurity governance could be built by establishing regular assessments intervals, measuring what matters, analyzing data, creating an improvement plan, and reporting to the board on cyber maturity and cyber-risk posture throughout the organization.

Important Drivers in Cybersecurity Governance

Among other standards, there are several most important drivers of cybersecurity governance in organizations such as ISO 27001, COBIT, and ISO 22301. Firstly, ISO 27001 Information Security Management System is formally establishing a management system intended to manage information security under management control. It becomes a formal specification of requirements in information security. Secondly, COBIT helps organizations create optimal value from IT by maintaining a balance between benefits realization and risk level optimization, as well as the use of resources. Lastly, ISO 22301 Business Continuity Management designed to protect businesses from potential disruptions, evaluating their impact and developing capability to minimize the impact of disruption.

Conclusion

Governance becomes an essential topic in cybersecurity that describes policies and processes to determine how organizations detect, prevent, and respond to cyber incidents. There are several steps that could be implemented by organizations to strengthen their cybersecurity governance, as well as some important drivers of cybersecurity governance such as ISO 27001, COBIT, and ISO 22301.

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References

Iannone, P., & Omar, A. (2015). Five Reasons Your Cybersecurity Governance Strategy May be Flawed and How to Fix It. (2015). Associate Professor, Kogod School of Business, American University, 3–4. https://www.american.edu/kogod/research/cybergov/articles/upload/kcgc-white-paper_iannone-omar-3-18-16.pdf

Nigro, P. (2020, September 23). Cybersecurity governance: A path to cyber maturity. SearchSecurity. https://searchsecurity.techtarget.com/post/Cybersecurity-governance-A-path-to-cyber-maturity