What business you are actually in?

Do you want to be perceived, and perhaps more importantly, do you want to operate, as the carrot or the stick? In other words, do you want to play the role of the enforcer or the motivator/enabler? All too often our profession seems to lean towards that of the enforcer. Or, in many cases, more like a first responder. We have historically been very reactive in our approach to managing security. As a matter of fact, we have built entire product  areas on managing event streams for purely reactionary purposes (like the IDS and SIEM markets).

While these are worthwhile monitoring concepts and shouldn’t be ignored, there is a vast ocean of untapped opportunity around a more consultative and proactive approach.

Who are your customers?

Just like a start-up, you need to identify who in your organization (and in some cases, those beyond your organization) are your customers. Don’t forget to include those parties that you only see occasionally, such as external auditors, and possibly even suppliers or other business partners. Your information can be a valuable part of their engagement with your organization as well.

This is a critical component to deciding the next step, which is what services and products (i.e.; packaged information for decision support you are offering and how best to ensure that it is useful to the recipients.

Choosing your product and service mix.

Now that you have decided who would be consuming your value-added information, it’s time to identify what makes up your product and service portfolio. The best place to start is to look at the controls spreadsheet that your internal and external auditors use to track the control objectives and activities they are responsible for testing.

While it isn’t a comprehensive set of controls for your security program, it is the minimum set of functions that you should look at for building out your business model. It also comes “pre-loaded’ with a target market and allows you to start building a rapport with the consumers of the information you are providing so that you can make sure that you package it correctly and deliver it in a manner that makes it easier for them to use.

Here is the slide deck that accompanies this portion of the Competitive Compliance curriculum we have developed. Feel free to spread the link around, or even download the PDF of the deck if you find it useful. As always, your feedback is greatly appreciated. Not just on how this site can be improved, but also what other content or ideas you’d like to see in the curriculum or content on this site.

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Technology has moved to center stage as a partner in business enablement, and has brought along its associated risks.  IT and IT Security see massive changes daily in the very nature of the capabilities and services they provide.  Transformative changes and their resulting risks and benefits impact the business enterprise overall.

What changes?  EVERYTHING. This is a paradigm shift far greater than that of changing from mainframes and terminals to desktop computing. Potential anarchy lurks, and security risks change hourly.  IT Security can no longer manage risk in a vacuum.  The risks to IT Security are the risks to the enterprise, period.

It is imperative now for the Language of Risk to be a common element between Business and IT Security.  Each of these transformative changes in IT brings the potential for competitive advantage, cost savings and economies of scale.  The security risks bring potential for financial ruin, loss of reputation and regulatory fines.  Technology evolves, but it is past time for IT Security and Business to define what is essential, the security and availability for the resources required to do business.

We need a common lexicon.  We need “The Language of Risk.”  Let’s talk.

Here is the opening set of slides from the (ISC)² 2010 Security Leadership Series on Competitive Compliance which outlines how thinking like the business leads to improved communication between parties on risk.

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The increased corporate regulation brought about by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, and the increased demand for legal compliance programs, coupled with the trend in using litigation as a tool for business reform, have increased organization’s regulatory obligations. This increased scrutiny means that legal and regulatory issues may be one of the most important determinants in a organization’s external operating environment.

Compliance is quite possibly the last great source of untapped competitive advantage available today.

To download the latest research from University of Connecticut Asst. Professor Robert C. Bird, the paper that started it all, click below.

Get The Paper

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