The Importance Of Information Security Risk Management

The Significance of Information Security Risk Management

Discuss about the Importance of IT Risk Management.

Information security is primarily used to protect the confidentiality, integrity, accessibility, and availability of an organization sensitive data. Security has thus become a fundamental component of each organization so as to enhance its protection from malicious activities which should be mitigated to reduce the impact on the normal business operations (Stoneburner et al., 2002. In this era of information technology usage, many organizations are forced to look at the safety of their data and organization resources due to several security flaws that are associated with the deployment of information systems. However, information security is imperative in many ways. Management of security risk is rudimentary and it allows the organization to reduce the impacts of various threats which are in most cases unavoidable. Therefore, the organization should have risk management tool, cryptographic tools digital signatures procedures and policies on the security attack, and incident responses that are essential management ways of mitigating security attack. Furthermore, the management risk in Information Systems has aided many organizations in ensuring that they eradicate various incidents of attacks and data breaches. Generally, information security risk management practices are important as illustrated by the various organization that has deployed the technique in mitigating various vulnerabilities that articulated to their organization set up.

Information security risk management set the control system that enables the organization to manage all the users using the authentication and observation the activities of the various users in the organization (Benaroch et al., 2006). The management of all users which are permitted access to the organization confidential data and other forms of access reduces the risk thus helping in the management of security issues that organization is exposed to by preventing, detecting, and responding to the suspicious access from an unrecognized person. This is important in mitigating the security breaches, data access, and other malicious activities that may hinder the operation of the organization and thus there is a need for proper management of the potential risk.

The Information risk management is an important asset in ensuring business continuity. Since many security attacks impair the operation of the organization, Information security risk management mitigates various risk through the prevention and detection mechanism (Bandyopadhyay, and Mykytyn, 1999). This will put the organization on high alert on security terrorist and seal security loopholes prior to attacks. The management of risk involving the process of identification reducing and combating such security breaches to enable the operation of the organization to be continuous. Many organization which has emphasized the security risk management practices has eradicated operation failures due to security breaches. Thus risk management in the field of information technology is crucial in enabling organizations that have deployed the IT risk management to continuously operate. On the other hand when security incidence has occurred the risk management has a comprehensive way of handling the incident. This is possible due to the policies and procedures that are laid down in the risk management procedures and policies. Unlike the organization that doesn’t incorporate the information security management practices, Organization will have many delays when responding to security incidence. Hence information risk management practices are legitimate in responding to security threats and incidences that has already occurred.

Information Security Risk Management and Business Continuity

Information security risk management has led to significant reduction in money set aside for recovery after security attack (Aubert et al., 2005). Risk on information security can never be eliminated fully but it can be reduced to the lower level. Therefore, during the past days, the organization had to set aside some lump sum money to cater for losses emanating from security breaches. Risk management, however, has made the risk rare and the organization is in a position to use such money in running other projects pertaining the organization.

The strategies laid down on the risk management is another perquisite technique which is used nowadays in mitigating the information technology security risks. This has strategies that are clearly spelled and there is no hesitation in responding to security attacks. Addition the strategic benefits also have the ways of reducing the impact of attacks an on the organization. Most of these strategies of the IT security risk management practices has enabled the diverse organization to combat security risk before and even after the occurrence (Alhawari et al., 2012).  The strategies also have various appropriate approaches that meet the international standards on information security. In most cases, these approaches are systematically and can manage all the risks that are expounded to the organization. The framework of the risk management and strategies from the management team has enabled many organizations to mitigate the security vulnerabilities and elimination frequent attacks. In addition, this strategies and management has also enabled the organization to practice security standards that are recommended by the international information security bodies like National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST), Information system security association among others. The liaising also with such organization has enabled the many organization and companies to strengthen their security issues through the management of potential risks. Hence management of information security risk has made many organization assured the continuity of the organization regardless of many cybercrimes that are reported regularly (Zhang et al., 2010).

Information security risk management practices have enabled many organizations to be able to keep the confidentiality integrity and availability of data and information. Information technology is deployed in many organizations to perform various manipulation of data. Thus security on data to inhibit from an authorized alteration and facilitate integrity of the data is essential and organizations are able to keep the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data to the allowed people and manage the risk associated to such unauthorized access using the risk management technique. Therefore, risk management practice is important in m keeping the data confidential, keeping the integrity of such data and information and making data available only to the authorized people and manage the data from any form of unauthorized alteration (McGaughey et al., 2004).

Information Security Risk Management Strategies

Information technology risk management involves the planning of the risk incidents I term of the information breaches and security attacks. The planning involves the set of incident response team which ensures the organization data and the entire security attack are minimized and even eradicated from the organization (Benaroch et al., 2007). The team are always vigil and promptly respond to any reported incidents regarding security attack. The planning also gives a holistic cover of the surety issues and the management of the risk by the organization will be streamlined and the attack will definitely become meagre. Hence the planning as a tool of management of the risk will assist the organization in diminishing the attacks which always impair with the organization operations.

Information risk also set the risk tolerance and risk appetite. Information security is non-avoidable and the organization has to set the level of the risk that is tolerable. The risk appetite and risk tolerances aid the organization to know the level of risk that the organization is capable to tolerate and manage and raise the alarm the risk goes beyond the acceptable domains (Kouns, and Minoli, 2011).

Information security risk management practices allow the establishment of the infrastructure and adoption of an ideal culture of identifying analyzing and monitoring potential risk to an organization. Risk should be identified before causing peril to the organization and to do so there must be a culture within the organization on the lay infrastructure to succeed. Again the risk should analyze and before responding because different risk requires unlike responses thus the management risk facilitate such responses. The monitoring process on the other hand forms a culture which makes the management of risk to be ease and identifiable very easily communication as form of raising concerns and impetus response to the risk incident also play an integral part  by making the dedicated team to promptly bombard the risk and prevent the risk from causing adverse effects on  the organization because the management of risk involves greatly the concept of communication   during the even suspicious threats to the organization integrity and confidentiality. When these happen the impacts of attacks are easily mitigated and even prevented from happening through prior identification (Rainer et al., 2001).

Information security risk involves the training of the staffs and information security experts so as to be able to identify respond and prevent cyber-attacks (Blakley et al., 2001). This is of great significance when the organization has an able and responsible team which is supplemented by the organization staff in combating and handling security threat to organization data and confidential information. However, this will make organization able to manage all the potential threats and avoid suspicious activities and the organization will be able to work collectively to mitigate possible vulnerable loopholes due to the awareness and better understanding of risks (Benaroch, 2002).

Maintaining Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability of Data and Information

In conclusion, information security risks management practices are salient in this century where the organization has transited to the use of information technology for management and data related activities involving confidentiality, integrity, and availability of data and information to the desired persons. However, the risks involved in such activities should be monitored evaluated, analyzed and mitigated using the risk management practices in order for the organization to capable to meet the set goals and objectives. It I therefore mandatory for the organization to look at the ways of managing the risk before and even after the occurrence to lower the impact and reduce the impairment of the risk on the operation of the organization. Risk management practices, therefore, has aided many organizations to meet their goals and it is highly recommendable for the all organization to deploy these techniques to suppress the information technology attacks and security breaches

References

Alhawari, S., Karadsheh, L., Talet, A.N. and Mansour, E., 2012. Knowledge-based risk management framework for information technology project. International Journal of Information Management, 32(1), pp.50-65.

Aubert, B.A., Patry, M. and Rivard, S., 2005. A framework for information technology outsourcing risk management. ACM SIGMIS Database: the DATABASE for Advances in Information Systems, 36(4), pp.9-28.

Bandyopadhyay, K., Mykytyn, P.P. and Mykytyn, K., 1999. A framework for integrated risk management in information technology. Management Decision, 37(5), pp.437-445.

Benaroch, M., 2002. Managing information technology investment risk: A real options perspective. Journal of management information systems, 19(2), pp.43-84.

Benaroch, M., Jeffery, M., Kauffman, R.J. and Shah, S., 2007. Option-based risk management: A field study of sequential information technology investment decisions. Journal of Management Information Systems, 24(2), pp.103-140.

Benaroch, M., Lichtenstein, Y. and Robinson, K., 2006. Real options in information technology risk management: An empirical validation of risk-option relationships. MIS quarterly, pp.827-864.

Blakley, B., McDermott, E. and Geer, D., 2001, September. Information security is information risk management. In Proceedings of the 2001 workshop on New security paradigms (pp. 97-104). ACM.

Kouns, J. and Minoli, D., 2011. Information technology risk management in enterprise environments: A review of industry practices and a practical guide to risk management teams. John Wiley & Sons.

McGaughey Jr, R.E., Snyder, C.A. and Carr, H.H., 2004. Implementing information technology for competitive advantage: risk management issues. Information & Management, 26(5), pp.273-280.

Rainer Jr, R.K., Snyder, C.A. and Carr, H.H., 2001. Risk analysis for information technology. Journal of Management Information Systems, 8(1), pp.129-147.

Stoneburner, G., Goguen, A.Y. and Feringa, A., 2002. Sp 800-30. Risk management guide for information technology systems.

Zhang, X., Wuwong, N., Li, H. and Zhang, X., 2010, June. Information security risk management framework for the cloud computing environments. In Computer and Information Technology (CIT), 2010 IEEE 10th International Conference on (pp. 1328-1334). IEEE.