Many companies find the task of protecting information completely bewildering, especially due to the proliferation of different sources and destinations of information. In this very helpful article Scott Crawford (Managing Research Director, Security & Risk Management of Enterprise Management Associates) proposes a systematic analysis of data flows as one of the best ways to get rid of information overload bewilderment and the resultant risk.
Once executive management is convinced of the value of being pro-active about risk management the road-map to achieving success is as follows:
Risk Management can be applied to the organization as a whole (Enterprise Risk Management) or to a specific area or department. The case study presented here is one which addresses ICT Risk Management.
All too often organizations have preferred to operate in re-action mode when they addressed IT security issues. It seems that deep in the minds of managers lies the belief that major security problems "won't happen to us". They prefer to believe that articles in newspapers and journals highlight the extreme cases wrongly inferring that they are typical, that the stories are exaggerated for shock value anyway, and that the number of incidents are examples of journalistic license. This attitude is often reinforced by the protective approach that management takes towards incidents that do occur. They are kept "in-house" at various levels of management because of the belief that ICT problems reflect badly on management performance.
To date, the implementation of ERM programs has largely been met with organizational confusion and few models of success. Here's why:
IT is a domain where spending is a constant, essential to maintaining a competitive advantage in today's technology dependent world. Within IT, this pace is arguably the most demanding in security, because it is set not by the business or its suppliers, but by threats – both outside and inside the business. With each new wave of threat, the market produces new security tools that seem essential to safety. This leads to an 'arms race' where the enterprise must weigh its expenditures for defence against strategic priorities essential to maintaining a competitive edge.
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