From a mobile device to cloud storage, you’ll find data. It is critical to have information security governance since data is everywhere.

Many businesses store data to improve their practices. For instance, many businesses store data to analyze customers’ needs. Yet, hackers want to steal your data. It doesn’t matter if your business is small or huge. You are a target as long as you have data. 

This creates challenges for organizations on how to keep that information secure. Information security governance is the key to doing that.

What Is Information Security Governance?

Information security governance (ISG) provides strategic direction to companies. Furthermore, it ensures that organizations achieve their objectives. ISG also manages risks that a company face. Moreover, it checks if the enterprise security program is successful or not.

However, information security governance and IT management are not the same. ISG is authorized and responsible for decision-making in eliminating security risks. ISG doesn’t implement the policy. That is what IT management does. 

Thus, ISG oversees and creates a program or policy. To sum, it focuses on the strategic and not the tactical.

Why Is Information Security Governance Important?

As we have mentioned earlier, ISG sets strategic measures to protect an organization’s information. Not having an ISG is dangerous. Why? Data breaches cause huge financial and reputational damages. Some of the sensitive information an organization usually holds are:

• Legal
• Customer
• Financial
• Partner
• Research and development
• Proprietary, and more

These types of information and others are valuable to competitors. Worse, these are valuable even to criminals.

Cybercriminals continue to make headlines. They hack huge companies and compromise the companies’ data. For example, hackers stole an estimated 100 terabytes of sensitive data from Sony Pictures Entertainment. One more example is the Anthem Medical data breach. 

If such huge companies experienced an information security breach, what more for smaller companies? Furthermore, the effects of a data breach may stay for a long time. Some of these consequences include:

• Lack of trust from customers and partners
• Legal liabilities
• Damage to brand reputation
• Associated revenue decreases

ISG assures customers, partners, and employees that the company they are working with is secure. Furthermore, corporate data becomes more accessible to employees via mobile devices and the cloud. Hence, companies must ensure that only authorized employees have access to that data. Additionally, ISG ensures that criminals won’t access sensitive data.

Indeed, everyone must uphold information security. Yet, the organization’s leaders are the main people responsible for developing ISG. ISG requires strategic planning and decision making.

Conclusion

The success of an information security governance doesn’t happen overnight. Thus, it is a continuous process. Every company indeed has its specific needs. Yet, information security is a common goal for all organizations.

There is a saying that goes “prevention is better than cure”. Placing an ISG as the defense is far better than scrambling after a data breach. Everyone must accept the fact that data breaches are inevitable. It is not a question of “who” but “when”. But with a strategic ISG, there’s nothing to worry about.