by Angela S.
Most companies ignore the importance of information governance in ensuring good cybersecurity. Advancing technology, such as cloud computing, increasing compliance mandates, and increasing amounts of data to be secured have made it essential to improve your cybersecurity strategies. Any company’s information governance should match the cybersecurity protocols implemented. Besides, the strategies should be constantly reviewed, and all strategies updated to secure data from attacks and intrusions. The outline below highlights the intersection between information governance and cybersecurity.
What is Information Governance?
As the name suggests, information governance defines how an organization manages its data. It involves a company’s policies, controls, processes, and strategies adopted to secure information according to the business needs.
The basics of information governance for any individual or company is knowing your data. This involves understanding the amount, nature, importance, storage, and how information in your possession can be destroyed. That said, building a strong information governance system provides a solid platform from which cybersecurity strategies can be rolled out.
What is Cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity revolves around the processes, technologies, and practices adopted by an organization to protect crucial information, internet networks, essential programs, and company devices from attacks. Cyberattacks are increasingly becoming more sophisticated. Therefore, organizations should adopt improved cybersecurity measures to avoid and eliminate such threats.
Always be ready for Security Breaches
As an organization, it is important to know that you are never free from cyberattacks. All organizations, be it small or large, with crucial information, are always susceptible to attacks from cybercriminals. Therefore, you should constantly evaluate the situation of your cybersecurity. Ensure that your adopted cybersecurity measures can effectively detect and react to intrusions, phishing, malware, and other security breaches.
Cybercriminals always follow the same sequence when breaching any organizations’ data. The events begin when the malicious individual circumvents the installed security measures. The hacker may steal, makes changes, or destroy the information in your systems. Once you detect intrusion, the recovery race begins. This involves identifying the affected records and attempts to restore deleted or altered information.
That said, organizations should understand the nature of data in their custody. Without such knowledge, installing effective cybersecurity strategies becomes impossible. Unfortunately, most organizations don’t know the amount of data they possess and various data forms. Therefore, to achieve fully-fledged information governance and cybersecurity, organizations should consider the following;
- Understand Where Valuable and Unsecure Information Resides
Most information governance experts advising on cybersecurity begin by identifying the organization’s most sensitive information. In most cases, there is a significant gap between what IT personnel in the organization consider to be sensitive information and what actual data suggests. That said, crucial information varies from one company to another. While some companies have sensitive files in their stores, crucial information can be individuals in some cases. This includes any personal data that can be used by malicious hackers to identify an individual, directly or indirectly.
- Remove invaluable content
A good information governance system should focus on a regular cleanup process to eliminate content that is of little value but can potentially cost the organization. Organizations should focus on eliminating a large volume of content and unnecessary data that costs the organizations’ storage. This not only lowers storage requirements but also shrinks your company’s risk profile.
- Reduce risky behaviors
Once you succumb to an attack, most managers and IT experts often wonder how such private data found itself in an unprotected drive. In most cases, private data is lost in bits during transfers and information sharing between departments. The best way to avoid such is instituting information governance measures that fix risky processes and shrink gaps in your security model. For instance, employees often do what is easier for them to complete tasks effectively but not securely. Therefore, as a manager, provide an easy option that makes their tasks easy while maximizing security.
- Improve your Searching Efforts
Using modern, powerful tools, such as Nuix Data can help you locate private data quickly compared to traditional indexing tools. Such tools use specific data elements, such as employee IDs and credit card numbers, instead of using unfiltered search mechanisms. This can save a lot of time if you are looking for specific information.
Information Governance is Key for Good Cybersecurity
Evidently, effective information governance is essential to ensuring that your cybersecurity strategies are intact. This includes creating and regularly updating policies that guide information management in an organization. Successful information governance involves a combined team effort from high-level managers, providing sufficient IT resources, retention and deletion policies, and accountability.
Without a doubt, successful cybersecurity is not just about updated technology. It includes a clear understanding of an organization’s data, data backup, and information flow within an organization. That said, managers looking to advance their information governance should consider enrolling in a coding school or Bootcamp. Veterans can take advantage of the G.I Bill benefits, which provides financial aid to veterans, active military members, and their families.
For more information about attending college as a veteran check out this link.
