Protect Business Information to Mitigate Organizational Risk

Information risk management (IRM) is the overarching process of combatting threats and vulnerabilities, and the resulting consequences of unprotected data. Given the escalating threats of today’s security environment and the 24/7/365 connectivity of most organizations, the number of threats to insecure files is countless, the vulnerabilities are indeed very real, and the potential consequences for an organization can be fatal.

Key Elements of a Risk Management Strategy

Threats

Although technology is the penetration point, the truth is (ironically), the number one threat to an organization’s IT environment is actually humans. Not all data compromises are conducted by hackers, many are accidents. That does not include viruses and other forms of malware, which pose an ongoing threat to all forms of IT.

Vulnerabilities

Vulnerabilities of a company live in the masses of sensitive data that is stored, accessed, modified, shared and then stored again in various places by staff, partners and the like. The information often includes names, social security numbers and other personal data, and can include financial information such as credit card and bank account numbers.

Consequences

Identify theft happens once every two seconds in the U.S. Financial data records are lost or stolen at a rate of 32 per second — resulting in often crippling effects to the business or individual.

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Business Compliance Monitoring: Maintain Compliance with Relative Laws, Regulations and Industry Guidelines

Business process compliance is a hot topic across many industries, demonstrating that companies are effectively complying with relevant constraints such as regulations, laws or guidelines. While in reality, compliance checks are often conducted manually, ensuring they are conducted regularly and systematically is critical to the stability and viability of the organization.

The introduction of regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SoX) and HIPAA, as well as long-standing regulation in areas such as insurance and banking, means that more companies have to deal with compliance than ever before. Many companies are turning to technology to address the issues this growth of regulation brings.

Business Continuity: Keep Your Organization Running Around the Clock

Creating a business continuity plan helps your organization identify and prioritize which systems and processes must be maintained as well as provide the needed information for maintaining them. Business continuity plans are essential for helping the organization successfully manage through challenging scenarios such as data center outages, cyber-attacks and even natural disasters.

Elements of a a business continuity plan typically include:

  • Employee contact list
  • Key supplier/vendor information
  • Key contacts
  • Prioritized list of critical business functions
  • Recovery locations
  • Copies of essential records
  • Critical telephone numbers
  • Critical supplies list
  • Inventory of the company’s equipment/machinery/vehicles
  • Inventory of the company’s computer equipment and software
  • List of communication venues
  • Disaster response / recovery (DR) plan

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