How can you identify and mitigate data security risks using governance metrics?

Data Governance amongst its vast reaching scope also takes into its ambit the importance of having a process of robust data security. The foremost step towards data security would be to scope out the data in classification in terms of the level of privacy, e.g. public, confidential etc. Thereafter shall be the task of data ownership of the data. And finally the data access and privilege for the data basis it's classification. Also, audit trail of the data usage should also be monitored. All these aspects should be documented in the data Governance policy and process for overarching the data security steps.

Identification: We should Implement robust data governance metrics to identify security risks. Monitoring: Monitor access controls, encryption usage, and data integrity. Audit : Regularly audit data handling procedures. Policies: Establish clear policies. Learning/ Training: Educate teams on data security. By assessing and refining governance metrics. We would be able to proactively mitigate data security risks and enhance overall cybersecurity posture.

Having does this as a CISO before, I would recommend before going down the Data Security maturity journey, you should consider the following as this would help you assess maturity better - Do you have a Data Classification for type of data consumed/managed/processed in your organisation? - Is the Data Classification documented as a policy and actually applied in atleast 1 application in your organisation? - Are there are data privacy & goveranance e.g GDPR etc that your company needs to abide to? The above question would help you set the right foundation and tone for assessing the Data Security Maturity.

You can also use data security standards like the ISO standards to evaluate your data governance metrics and practices. Training is a must to the organisation can maintain required standards and best practices. Ensure you have data classification, policies and procedures in place. You should carry out monitoring checks and audits on access controls, incident management, entitlement reviews, backup, DLP etc to ensure the requirements are met and possibly identify gaps or failures. As the organisation continues to build on this, the data security state improves and matures.

Metric: Percentage of data accurately classified and labeled. Metric: Rate of unauthorized access attempts. Metric: Percentage of sensitive data encrypted. Metric: Number of DLP policy violations. Metric: Average time to resolve security incidents. Metric: Number of detected user behavior anomalies. Metric: Percentage of data retention policy compliance. Metric: Rate of successful data backup and recovery tests. Metric: Percentage of employees who complete data security training. Metric: Number and severity of data audit findings. Metric: Percentage of compliance with data privacy policies. What these metrics mitigate should be self-explanatory. not writing that with limited space.

Using data security compliance is an excellent guide but remember. Compliance is not security. This is a common pitfall many fall into. In my personal experience using these compliance frameworks is a great way to measure how mature you are as an organization. This then helps also outlay a project list and roadmap for where you want to be. This is one area I will say highest score is not a winner. Understand areas against your industry where you need to be and where it’s ok to lag slightly. Everything can’t be a priority at once.

Not all regulatory compliances deal with data security, but some of the regulatory compliances help secure the data. Organizations are expected to shred the Personally Identifiable Information data after use. In doing that, organizations minimizes the possibilities of identity theft, which in turn, would increase customer trust.

Data security compliance metrics can serve as leading indicators and targets to improve for other critical areas such as incident response, service resiliency, etc. Depending on how your trending, your investment in people, programs and solutions can further be optimized ....with ... you guessed it - what the data is telling you (see what i did there :D)

Importante desmistificar o “estar compliance” do “estar seguro”. Durante minha carreira vi muitos líderes preocupados em implementar controles e processos burocráticos para estar compliance com determinada regulamenta??o, e isso, além de ter tornado seus processos mais complexos, também n?o melhorou os controles de seguran?a. Garantir compliance é importante mas precisa ser estruturado e pensado de forma conjunta com os especialistas e líderes de TI e Seguran?a, para que se tenha o resultado também alinhado com a expectativa do negócio. E n?o apenas para “cumprir tabela”.

Sometimes a crisis is a great opportunity to get better. Using incident data is a very reactive way of understanding the problems you have. In my experience, at this point it’s simply too late. Let’s use this as a worst case indicator of what needs to be fixed and proactively get ahead of incidents as we can.

Um incidente de seguran?a colocará muitos de seus controles em prática. Ele te dirá que seu plano de continuidade de negócios está coerente, se foi testado de forma adequada, se está funcionando, te mostrará se seu monitoramento está coletando e analisando os logs das atividades, fontes e métricas corretas, te mostrará se sua equipe está atuando nos alarmes de forma assertiva, se seus playbooks est?o atualizados, e mais uma série de coisas, que precisam ser constantemente ajustadas, no dia a dia, e que te indicar?o onde est?o seus pontos cegos.

Awareness of data security is the only way we can create a culture of security in the company. Help educate users on how they can use labeling, classification, retention and proper diligence of document handing to help be the front line of security for the company. Traditional security tools don’t facilitate this well. I’ve gotten very creative in helping end users learns and uses these features. Having a change manager in the company is also key to help adopt and use these tools as part of the cultural assimilation we need to achieve.

Seguran?a é responsabilidade de todos dentro de uma organiza??o. Conscientiza??o é o processo que transforma esse controle numa cultura organizacional para que cada usuário possa ser um elo mais forte na corrente de prote??o de cada empresa. Quanto mais informa??es e conhecimento sobre seguran?a cada colaborador tiver, e quanto mais consciente eles forem, menor será a exposi??o aos riscos de seguran?a.

People, process, technology. If any of these steps are missing, you’re 100% certain efficiency and effectiveness is compromised. Staff awareness is important so they know what is the process in place. Awareness training is a not foolproof way to prevent any data security incident from happening, but at least with proper nudging and repeated reminders, staff know how to identify data security incidents, how to report it, and who to escalate it to. And this is the opportunity to educate staff on the policies they should be compliant with, including data classification policy which is integral as most staff handle documents (whether digital or paper) in their daily work.

Data security controls are a paramount part of identity, protect, detect, respond and recover phases of security. The proper controls and tools in each category provide a layered security approach. The controls, responding to the signals and having a proper organizational process to tune and iteratively optimize the signals will help get better over time!

At the database level, data masking and virtual private databases (also known as row level security) can be implemented. This could be one of the steps building data security. Highly confidential data like Social Security Numbers, can be masked further viewing in databases and in reports. Row level security further prevents consumers seeing data that are not relevant to them.

N?o espere somente que a auditoria, seja interna ou externa, avalie seu ambiente de controle. Fa?a você mesmo o teste dos seus controles, de forma pró-ativa. Esse exercício te trará clareza dos seus pontos falhos, do que precisa ser feito pra mitigar riscos e do que deve ser priorizado. Além disso, você poderá se antecipar aos problemas e definir a??es de solu??o antes que alguma vulnerabilidade seja explorada.

Think of the Data Security controls falling into these 3 buckets: 1. Administrative - what governance is in place around policies, procedures, standards, etc? 2. Technical - what specific technology and configurations is protecting the data? 3. Physical - what physical controls are in place to protect the data (assets, backup media, site security)?