The overarching concepts and values that govern how you operate your organization are known as governance. That has to do with your company’s vision, objectives, and ideals. Your company’s corporate governance is its heart; it keeps everyone on task and aids in your success. Your company’s information governance keeps its data on point and strengthens the integrity and accuracy of operations.
What is information security governance?
Information is more than a collection of details, names, numbers and records… Information is a critical asset of most organizations. Significant impact rides on the security of this information, protecting it from breaches or damage, and directly affecting the reputation and continuity of the organization.
Utmost care for an organization’s information is absolutely critical. From storage and transit to accessibility and retrieval, information security must be carefully monitored and managed throughout its lifecycle.
Information governance are the policies, processes and controls created specifically to manage and secure information. These will cover information security, integrity, accessibility, authorization, deletion and overall management.
Information Security Triad
The famous triad of information security is made up of:
- Confidentiality: Sensitive or private information must remain that way. This means processes must protect the accessibility or the information, control who is authorized to interact with it, and protect it from unauthorized breaches.
- Integrity: Information is valuable as long as it is accurate and true. The risk of information being compromised or changed heightens when it is accessed by users with the ability to alter it, or when it is in transit.
- Availability: Information needs to be accessible to its authorized users in a timely manner. For systems categorized as critical, extreme availability requirements are typically present (power generation, medical equipment, safety systems). These systems must be resistant to cyberattacks and include safeguards against incidents that could limit system availability, such as hardware failures, power outages, and others.
Information security governance and risk management go hand in hand. In order to secure information, a comprehensive risk assessment must be undertaken to identify and prioritize the risks facing information security. Gaining insights into controls that may be missing or necessary remediation steps also make a risk assessment an important endeavor.
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See for yourself how the Centraleyes platform exceeds anything an old GRC
system does and eliminates the need for manual processes and spreadsheets
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Benefits of Information Security Governance
If your organization offers poor management of data security (another term for information security), you’ll be left with issues of accessibility, ease of use, timeliness and security. Proper governance can remedy these problems and ensure your organizational information is in tip-top shape.
- Keeping compliant with standards, regulation and laws – A robust information security program will ensure a company is ready to meet compliance. Not only does better compliance increase security, but increased security prepares for better levels of compliance. Compliance for information security governance may mean complying with any of the information security governance frameworks or standards:
- Single Source of Truth (SSOT) – Proper information governance will reduce the chance of the same information being stored multiple times causing confusion through conflicting versions. Effective governance will establish a single source of truth (SSOT) and ensure smooth reference to and use of information.
- Data as valuable business information – The majority of organizations have a ton of data, but it can be difficult to deliver it to the right people, at the right time. Without the correct organization of information, companies will gloss over the important insights that could be gleaned to transform that data into business information. Data analysis is built upon strong information governance.
- Reduce risks and costs of discovery and litigation – Inaccurate or damaging information can lead to lawsuits, compliance penalties and reputational damage.
- Improved decision making – Being able to clearly see all your information means being able to look at the details against the big picture and make informed business decisions.
Good information security will involve a holistic approach taking into account systems, networks, people and more. Undertaking a comprehensive risk assessment will act as the basis for a strong foundational evaluation of your security posture and what could be affecting your information systems. Ensure findings are incorporated into building robust and manageable policies and that roles and responsibilities of infosec are clearly defined. Check out the Centraleyes platform today to begin building a safe environment for your information security.
Start Getting Value With
Centraleyes for Free
See for yourself how the Centraleyes platform exceeds anything an old GRC
system does and eliminates the need for manual processes and spreadsheets
to give you immediate value and run a full risk assessment in less than 30 days
