Let’s imagine for a moment that your business experiences a cyber attack. What actions have you undergone to prevent one from happening and to mitigate its impact?
If you cannot think of the answer to that question, or you remember going over this a few years ago, then it is time for you to revisit your cyber security governance strategy.
Whether you are a small business owner or a large enterprise, understanding the importance of cyber security governance is essential for protecting your organisation from threats and maintaining the trust of your customers.
What are the elements of cyber security governance?
Cyber security governance is essential for your organisation to manage and mitigate risks effectively. When developing your strategy, there are several key elements that you must consider. These include:
Risk management identifies, assesses and prioritises cyber risks to minimise their impact on the organisation. Effective risk management involves regular assessments to identify potential vulnerabilities and threats to the business’ data and systems. Once identified, your organisation can take steps to reduce the likelihood and impact of these risks.
Security policies and procedures outline the rules and guidelines your team must follow to ensure the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of your business’ systems. Policies should cover password management, access controls, data classification, and incident reporting.
Incident response and recovery plans minimise the impact of a cyber attack and restore normal business operations. These plans outline the steps your organisation will take in response to an incident, including how to contain it, investigate the cause, and restore systems and data.
Security awareness and training programs ensure your team knows the risks associated with cyber threats and how to prevent them. Security awareness and training programs help people understand the importance of cyber security, how to identify and report incidents, and best practices for protecting sensitive information.
What benefits does cyber security governance drive?
There are several key benefits that your organisations can realise by developing effective cyber security governance practices, including:
Maintaining business continuity: Cyber security incidents can disrupt business operations and result in significant financial losses. By implementing effective incident response and recovery plans, your organisation can minimise the impact of incidents and maintain business continuity should a disaster occur.
Complying with regulations and standards: Many industries are subject to industry regulations and standards that require them to implement cyber security controls. By implementing effective cyber security governance practices, your business can maintain compliance with these regulations and standards, ensuring you avoid fines and penalties.
Enhancing reputation and trust: Cyber security incidents can deal significant reputational damage. By implementing effective cyber security governance practices, your organisation demonstrates a commitment to protecting customer data and information. This can improve your reputation as a trustworthy company reputation and build trust with customers and staff.
5 best practices for implementing cyber security governance
Effective cyber security governance requires a comprehensive approach that includes a range of policies, procedures, and practices. There are several best practices that your organisation can follow, including:
- Developing a comprehensive cyber security plan: This outlines your business’ approach to managing cyber risks. This plan should include policies and procedures for risk management, security awareness and training, incident response and recovery, and note the regulations and standards you must comply with.
- Establishing a cyber security team: This team oversees the business’ cyber security efforts, including identifying and assessing cyber risks, developing and implementing security policies and procedures, and responding to security incidents.
- Regularly reviewing policies and procedures: Cyber threats continuously evolve, and your business must stay up-to-date with the latest threats and vulnerabilities. Regularly reviewing and updating security policies and procedures ensures your organisation can respond to new threats and vulnerabilities.
- Conducting regular risk assessments: Your organisation should conduct regular risk assessments to identify potential vulnerabilities and threats to your data and systems. Based on the results of these assessments, your cyber security team should take steps to reduce the likelihood and impact of these risks.
- Ongoing training and awareness: Employees are often the weakest link in an business’ cyber security defences. Providing ongoing training and awareness programs helps your team understand the importance of cyber security and how to prevent attacks. It is best to conduct these sessions consistently to refresh your long-time staff and ensure new people have the right knowledge.
VISITS can guide your cyber security governance strategy
Though we often see large corporations featured on the news, the reality is that cyber attacks impact companies of every size. So, you need a comprehensive and systematic approach to assessing needs, analysing current controls and implementing improvements.
This is where VISITS’ CISO as a Service comes in. With our principle of ‘Less talk, more action’, we focus on building a strategy that delivers methodical and tangible improvements. Visit our CISO as a Service page for more information and to book your complimentary cyber discovery session.