Security threats and system vulnerabilities are advancing by the day. It’s imperative that you take preemptive steps in managing threats that may compromise your critical data. As the use of technology has increased, cyber-attacks, resulting in data breaches have skyrocketed. There’s no better time to create an information security program plan than now.
Regardless of the size of your business, there’s a need to back up the security of your valuable data. Every little piece of information is important!
Businesses of all sizes across the globe are acknowledging the information security program plan as the cornerstone for their company’s security foundation. A successful cybersecurity information security plan impacts multiple areas of your business. Learn about who you need to involve and how to create your plan.
What is an Information Security Program Plan?
An information security plan is a document that outlines a company’s sensitive information and the steps to take to protect that information. It’s a documented set of your organization’s information security policies and standards. Having a strong security program ensures that your customer’s information is protected, as well as other private data.
In addition, the program plan analyzes the risks related to the loss or theft of a company’s data, and details the company’s response in the event of a data breach.. A security program provides a roadmap for effective security management practices and controls.
Assess your cybersecurity
Why Build an Information Security Program Plan?
Breaches affect a lot of financial organizations, healthcare organizations, and other sectors of the economy. These organizations are stretched to the max in order to forestall these breaches. But here comes the good news.
An information security program plan provides a documented set of your organization’s cybersecurity policies and standards. Your information security program ensures the integrity, confidentiality, and availability of your client’s data through effective security management.
In addition, having a plan in place enables you to channel your resources in targeted ways that would safeguard your data.
3 Fundamentals Of an Information Security Program Plan
While there’s a constant change in information technology trends, the fundamentals of a good security program always remain the same. Below is a list of the basic components of any information security program:
- Organizational security screening: To a large extent, pre-employment screening can go a long way in the creation of a secure workforce, by the reduction of risks that are embedded in human interaction. For example, screening employees and defining roles and responsibilities can go a long way in determining if you’ve hired a trustworthy employee or a potential cybercriminal.
- Information security policy for the organization: An information security policy is the bedrock of an information security program. It reflects the strategy of the organization for securing information. It is formally agreed upon by the management, to enable the execution of the program.
- Asset classification and control: It may not be fascinating to identify assets that need to be protected, but without the company knowing these assets, their locations and values, it would be almost impossible to determine the amount of time and effort that needs to be taken to secure these assets.
What Can Cyber-attacks Do To Your Business?
A successful cyber-attack can bring long-term damages to your organization. It can also affect your business reputation, as well as your customer’s trust. The reputational damage can bring about a negative impact on your suppliers, and affect your relationship with your investors or other important personalities contributing to your business.
The negative impact of cyber-attacks on an organization is greatly under-rated. This is why it’s imperative to be involved in the information security program, which will ensure the safety of your company’s data.
Importance Of an Information Security Program Plan
Irrespective of the size of your business, information security programs are a vital part of any organization. The importance of managing information security risks has never been more crucial. There are so many stories that come up every day about major security breaches. More importantly, many of these breaches can take a long time to be detected, thereby causing a lot of damage to the company before they are discovered. Here, below, are three important reasons why you need security program development.
1. Confidentiality
To ensure that sensitive information doesn’t end up in the hands of the wrong people, confidentiality must be maintained. To do this, only authorized individuals should have access to sensitive information. There are a few methods that could be used to achieve this; they include unique user IDs, encryption, two-factor authentication, etc.
2. Availability
To maintain availability, you must ensure that critical assets, information, and services are available to customers when needed. Performing regular backups is a way to help maintain the availability of critical assets.
3. Integrity
Implementing file permissions and access controls can help to protect data integrity. If you’re unsure of how to maintain the integrity of your sensitive data, all you need to do is maintain its accuracy and authenticity. This means that sensitive data must be protected from intentional or accidental changes that could debase the data.
Developing Your Business Through Information Security Program Plan
The U.S. Congressional Small Business Committee found that 71% of cyber-attacks occurred at businesses with less than 100 employees. This has made it important to consider digital aspects of information in addition to the physical aspects of your small business. Information security program development and management helps to create a security-minded data storage plan.
Once it’s a company habit to backup all of their data on a regular basis, they will be able to incorporate security measures into the small business information security plan. This will enable them to avoid both physical and cyber-attacks moving forward.
5 Tips On Creating A Good Information Security Plan
A reliable information security plan gives your business a comprehensive picture on how to keep your company’s data safe. Below are a few steps on how you can create a good information security plan, and by taking these steps, you will be able to mitigate the risk of losing data in any way.
- Develop strong disaster recovery programs: When you’re able to identify a system risk, it will be easy for you and your team to come up with a disaster recovery program to tackle cybersecurity attacks. Computing system risks could come in the form of security breaches, natural disasters, or other events that could cause an accidental loss of assets.
- Work out a compliance strategy: To avoid penalties from regulatory bodies, it’s necessary to learn rules and acts that can be applied in information security strategy. Also, it’s important to schedule the necessary assessments and certifications.
- Manage data assets: Cross-functional security teams in your organization should take inventory of the company’s data assets, hardware, and software. Have close monitoring of information assets that include network shared folders and FTP sites.
- Assess your system and its security risks: You should identify your company’s most valuable data, and know if they are vulnerable to data security risks. Then figure out the type of controls you need to adopt and apply.
- Create your security team: Many organizations, even those with top-notch IT teams, hire security experts to help reinforce their systems at this critical point. It’s advisable to work with a good team to establish your security mission.
Closing Thoughts
In recent times, there have been continual attacks in cyberspace, introducing new vulnerabilities every day. This makes it difficult to manage new opportunities and combat cybersecurity threats.
However, RSI Security is always at your service to improve the security of your organization’s data, and shield your company’s system from the numerous security threats on the internet today.
Let RSI Security, through an intense analysis of your company’s system, supervise your security policies, either on a short-term or long-term basis and help you implement solutions that ensure a secure IT condition. Click here to get the best security program advisory service.