Projects in the technology area, aimed at information security and IT governance, can vary greatly in relation to their size, complexity and financial investment. Therefore, whenever your company starts implementing a new project, the size of the company, its maturity in relation to the use of technology resources, the technical and human resources availability for execution and the budget available for investment must be evaluated. .
From this context, we direct our analysis to the market of small and medium-sized companies, which, increasingly, also need to have security in their information and good management of IT resources. We noticed a difficulty in evaluating the return on investment, in order to make the execution of these projects viable. This is because the return is often not perceived because there are no monitoring metrics in relation to system performance, availability of IT resources, occurrences of security breaches or data loss and monitoring of team and employee productivity through technology. .
This lack of management metrics focused on technology and use of resources can often hide bottlenecks (problems) that compromise your company's competitiveness and results, such as high costs with equipment maintenance, compromise in the execution of tasks due to problems frequent occurrences of equipment or systems that stop working, low team productivity due to wasted time spent using the internet and personal cell phones by employees, not to mention the risks that the loss of company or customer data can represent.
In this way, we will address the benefits generated for companies, based on a good information security and IT governance policy.
Importance of Information Security
The first point to consider is the reasons why companies need security, which can be different and in some cases complement each other.
Some companies implement information security policies due to the need to adapt to regulatory standards, often applied to the company's sector of activity, such as financial institutions or accounting companies. In these cases, the value is entirely related to the need to protect financial, accounting information and customer data. As the need to meet standards is a requirement, investment in information security is part of the basic business costs and must be part of the company's strategic planning.
For companies that have units and/or distributed operations, the greatest need becomes the availability of information between the units and security in communication between them. It is common for branches to be connected to the headquarters via management systems and through this communication to transmit confidential business data. In these scenarios, information security becomes very important, as it needs to guarantee permanent availability of information and at the same time ensure that data cannot be intercepted. To estimate the value of security, one can consider the cost of lack of communication between units, where business activities cannot be carried out, often compromising core activities, such as sales and customer service.
In the context of small and medium-sized companies, where the need for security of business information may not be so easily perceived, it is necessary to estimate what the impact would be of the loss or theft of business information, such as financial or customer data.
Within these risks, we can highlight the epidemic of Ransomware attacks on SMEs in 2016, which consists of data hijacking. In this article we talk a little more about Ransomware and how to protect yourself .
Still within security, another important point is the incidence of viruses on the network and the costs generated from this problem, such as the need for maintenance on equipment and idle time for employees due to the unavailability of using equipment and systems.
Investing in information security is always a strategy with the aim of preventing risk and losses. Therefore, when evaluating the return on investment, the damage or impact that security failures may cause to the company must be considered.
Some examples of monitoring and ROI metrics can be measuring the expenses generated with IT professionals or companies from the maintenance of systems and equipment and calculating the idle time of your employees based on systems and equipment that are under maintenance or unavailable. Never forgetting to consider the impact that loss of information can have on your company.
A good information security policy involves several points. First, it is necessary to guide employees about the risks and how to identify them . After that, actions must address three complementary points:
- Prevent : protect information storage locations from access by third parties.
- Detect : quickly identify any type of attack or security breach.
- Respond : act efficiently in case of failures, correcting vulnerabilities and repairing affected points.
We know that a good information security policy requires planning and investment of personnel and financial resources. But it is essential that your company pays attention to this issue, assessing the risks and implementing measures to protect itself. Simple and affordable measures can often keep your company protected from most risks on the network.
Managing internet access is one of these simple actions, as it is possible to avoid accessing harmful websites on the internet. Access to these sites can occur in various ways, such as users clicking on fake email messages. This type of access is the biggest entry point for viruses into companies today.
Share here in the comments how your company evaluates the return on investment in relation to information security and what it does to stay protected!
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