Devising policies and controls to reduce risk
To ensure E2E security in an organization, a CISO is tasked with devising policies and setting up security controls to help mitigate any threats facing a company. The CISO role is an executive role in the management sphere and should have the influence to create policies that safeguard a company's operations. These policies affect a company's internal operations and mainly focus on the company's staff members. A CISO also reviews all interactions of all users within a system and the threat level from all these users. These users also include vendors of all software used within an organization. Some vendors may not be trustworthy and may provide an organization with software that is insecure or that has unaddressed security patches unknown to buyers.
We now have an idea of how security leaders devise security policies and controls in the implementation of their security functions. The next section highlights some of the internal staff policies developed by the security team.
Internal staff policies
Internal staff can be supportive in helping a company address internal threats. Staff members should be subjected to security controls that ensure that they do not have unlimited access to information assets within an organization. Access to information should be on a need-to-know basis to allow them to perform their functions effectively. Database administrators, who are part of the team that works directly under the CISO in an organization, are tasked with assigning privileges in the accessing of information within a company. These restrictions should be strictly reinforced. If an employee is terminated from an organization, their access privileges should be revoked immediately. Disgruntled employees are a known source of internal threats to an organization and have the capability to do major damage to a company's information assets.
Internal policies should be printed and pinned on a board where all employees can access them for reference to remind them of all the security policies. This should include the consequences of failing to adhere to these security policies. Consequences should be in the form of termination, fines, suspension, or legal action against employees violating these policies. These policies should be reviewed regularly to ensure that they continue to effectively safeguard internal operations and ultimately safeguard the company's information assets. In addition, the security team should ensure that employees respect these security policies and thus develop a culture of security. Employee culture is an integral factor in the implementation of security policies. While internal policies should be meant to safeguard company operations, they should not make staff members' execution of their duties unnecessarily difficult.
Other company policies
Aside from internal staff policies, CISOs also create policies that affect customers and other people that interact with the company, such as vendors. The main security policies that safeguard a company's information assets from non-staff members come in the form of physical security controls. Organizations will restrict sections of the company from customers and other non-staff members as a form of basic security control to limit the access of unauthorized people to sensitive information assets or simple theft. These are usually implemented through the use of security cards to access some rooms meant for staff only. These security cards can also have privilege access controls to limit even junior staff members from accessing rooms meant for only senior or authorized personnel. The security team is tasked with devising these security policies and continually reviewing them to ensure that they are effective in enforcing security measures within a company's premises.
We have addressed how a CISO devises policies and security controls to keep a company safe. The next section handles the role of auditing a company and ensuring it is compliant with laws and regulations, as the security controls must be able to enforce compliance.