The Cybersecurity Program Mind Map.

By Mark E.S. Bernard

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A cybersecurity program develops and maintains a strategy aligned with and fully supports the organization's mission and strategic goals. The cybersecurity program protects the organization's employees, digital assets, and information systems from physical, environmental, and cyber threats.?The program relies on soft skills, such as basic technical understanding, leadership, communications, team building, business acumen, governance, risk management, budgeting, business writing, and project management, combined with the deep program management skills listed below.

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1. Program Management oversees multiple procedures to achieve a company's cybersecurity goals and improve performance.?Program managers coordinate the Cybersecurity Program to ensure policies are complied with, procedures are completed effectively and on time, standards are complied with, and records are maintained.?

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2. Risk Management identifies, analyzes, and corrects defects and vulnerabilities within the cybersecurity program that can lead to exposure and opportunities for threat agents to exploit these weaknesses.?The goal is to help the organization understand and plan for potential risks to avoid or mitigate risks before they become a concern for the Executive and Board of Directors.?

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3. Knowledge Management (KM) is?a process that involves identifying, creating, organizing, distributing, and protecting the organization's knowledge and data assets.?The goal of KM is to make knowledge available to employees and customers based on their need to know so they can use it to achieve organizational goals.?

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4. Governance encourages the efficient and effective use of resources while establishing accountability for the stewardship of those resources. Governance encompasses setting goals and objectives, performance criteria for monitoring the Cybersecurity Program, setting and following secure information handling procedures and protection standards, blending in with the organization's culture, ensuring compliance with legal obligations, continuously improving the program, conducting audits and maintaining policies, procedures, standards and records of conformity.

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5. Enterprise Security Architecture (ESA) involves?designing, implementing, and maintaining a framework that protects an organization's information and technology assets.?ESA management helps organizations identify and mitigate security risks and ensure compliance with security regulations.?ESA helps establish standards as a minimum requirement for systems creating, processing, and maintaining organizational information assets.

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6. Monitoring involves paying close attention to digital and human signals to detect anonymous behavior that could identify a covert operation in progress and require investigation and potential deployment of preventive and corrective countermeasures. Monitoring the cybersecurity program requires setting key performance indicators (KPIs) to report the activities supporting these KPIs monthly to the Governance Committee, Executive Team, and Board of Directors.

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7. Integration combines two or more things to create an improved original version. It solves two or more business requirements with one solution. By taking an original business process and integrating quality management tools and techniques, we continue to deliver on the original purpose while improving the quality of the deliverables, products, and services. By taking an original business process and integrating risk management, we continue to deliver on the original purpose with the added feature of weighing the risks to improve decision-making.

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8. Communication involves exchanging knowledge between program leaders, employees, vendors, customers, interested parties, shareholders, regulators, and law enforcement. The goal of any knowledge exchange will drive the customization of the content and delivery channel.

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Document reference: Chief Cybersecurity Officer Mind Map pdf