Building information risk management frameworks: Developing controls for people, processes and technology

While this may be obvious to any organization that has already attempted to construct an information risk management framework, completing the process successfully requires executing on a number of detailed, complicated steps. As we covered earlier, once the confidentiality, integrity and availability needs are determined for a business area, appropriate people, process and technology controls should then be applied.

People controls are the most essential
For CISOs and their organizations, employees can be either the greatest asset or the biggest liability in the pursuit of managing information risks. CISOs can work with employees to develop a good security culture in the following three ways:

Technology controls create efficiencies and save time
Humans are much smarter than computers, but computers are much better at repetitive, time-consuming tasks. Thus, monitoring, enforcement, response, measurement and reporting of security controls are all prime candidates for automation, but only after you've trained your people and determined your processes. If you skip the people and process elements, all yo

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Process is the glue that binds people and technology
The best information risk management frameworks quickly become useless if no process exists to execute the policies. Forrester divides process into the following seven domains.

Taking a top-down approach
Security is a complicated business, and devising a simple way to discover and report where prioritization is needed is vital for not only keeping track of how well you're doing, but also convincing management that the security program is effective. By bringing the people, technology and process elements of security together in a security policy, organizations can establish a framework that effectively monitors, measures and reports on controls and the firm's compliance with security policies.

Khalid Kark is a principal analyst at Forrester Research. His research focuses on information risk management strategy, governance, best practices, measurement, and reporting. He can be reached at kkark@forrester.com.

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