Information Systems

J-A

Investments in information security are always a tough sale for security professionals to executives because it’s seen as a financial black hole.  Fortunately, there are now so many good examples in exploitation of bad security practices demonstrating the fines or disastrous effects on an enterprise.  This creates a reasonable basis for the argument of need along with the potential benefits.

 

There are a lot of regulations set forth on enterprises now governing how they must tackle information security.  Most regulations enforce punishment and fines for violations.  This is fantastic and great negotiation point but within an unregulated industry it’s mostly just a comparison.  There isn’t as much of a ‘stick’ without regulation.  Much of that security set within regulations also fits best deployment practices for stability, availability, and management.  Especially those policies that define the best use of features as opposed to additional investments like frequent updates and credential changes.  So there are benefits beyond just meeting the requirements of particular regulating bodies.  This lowers the operational cost, labor cost for engineers or administrators, and maintenance costs to maintain all of the gear.  The stick in this case would be the lowest possible cost to change in the event new regulations will be created.

 

Companies can also benefit from the rewards of proactively exercising a good security posture.  Customers, consumers, and professionals at other organizations are becoming ever more aware of how the products they choose protect their data.  Arguing this case to executives in unregulated industries are tough because those with consumers, publicly traded, students, or patients already have regulation.  This is typically organizations doing business with or for other organizations as their customers.  This allows them to insure their customers they meet or exceed best practices for the comparable regulations.  This kind of commitment and follow through to security goes a long way when companies choose vendors.  

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