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Your Challenge
- As a CISO, you are worried you’re going to lose your budget because management doesn’t seem to buy into spending on security.
- The CEO thinks the security team is disposable because they don’t support business objectives.
- Even while trying to anticipate and mitigate risk, the organization is constantly in firefighter mode trying to fight attacks and breaches. There is constantly a need for more resources.
- The security team is not even sure exactly which compliance requirements apply to the organization and if they're meeting them. Each audit is a scramble.
- It is not known how the security team is performing.
- There is not enough direction from management to ensure business goals are supported because management doesn’t seem to be interested in the report on security.
Our Advice
Critical Insight
- Most organizations perceive security governance and management to be a large, time-consuming, and expensive endeavor.
- A customized program will provide results with a relatively low investment.
Impact and Result
- Achieve executive engagement in information security governance and management through the completed business case.
- Recognize and prioritize your current security governance and management challenges.
- Develop a security governance and management framework suitable for your needs at a minimal cost.
- Implement your security governance and management framework using our tips and the tools and templates provided.
Guided Implementations
This guided implementation is an eight call advisory process.
Guided Implementation #1 - Assess security requirements
Call #1 - Understand the value and challenges of security governance and management to create your business case.
Call #2 - Define your risk tolerance and determine your security pressure posture.
Guided Implementation #2 - Perform a gap analysis
Call #1 - Perform a current state assessment of your capabilities and maturity levels.
Call #2 - Establish the governance and management target state.
Guided Implementation #3 - Develop gap initiatives
Call #1 - Identify where there are existing gaps and where initiatives should be built.
Call #2 - Prioritize the gaps based on resources and efforts to create an implementation timeline.
Guided Implementation #4 - Implement gap initiatives
Call #1 - Review and finalize the governance and management roadmap and action plan.
Call #2 - Build out your governance and management deliverables.

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Security Management Course
Establish the missing bridge between security and the business to support tomorrow's enterprise with minimal resources.
This course makes up part of the Security & Risk Certificate.
Course information:
- Title: Security Management Course
- Number of Course Modules: 4
- Estimated Time to Complete: 2-2.5 hours
- Featured Analysts:
- James McCloskey, Sr. Research Director, Security Practice
- Gord Harrison, SVP of Research and Advisory
- Now Playing: Academy: Security Management | Executive Brief
Book Your Workshop
Onsite workshops offer an easy way to accelerate your project. If you are unable to do the project yourself, and a Guided Implementation isn't enough, we offer low-cost onsite delivery of our project workshops. We take you through every phase of your project and ensure that you have a roadmap in place to complete your project successfully.
Module 1: Assess Security Requirements
The Purpose
- Demonstrate the value of implementing or improving security governance and management for the business.
- Define the risk tolerance of the organization.
- Objectively assess security pressure posture based on our list of comprehensive criteria.
- Provide a security posture description that business stakeholders can easily digest.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Understand the value of information security governance.
- Gain a better understanding of the organization’s risk tolerance and security pressure posture.
Activities
Outputs
Define goals/objectives for the workshop.
Demonstrate the value and challenges of security governance and management.
- Identified security target state.
Define the risk tolerance.
- Defined risk tolerance.
Define the security pressure posture.
- Defined security pressure posture.
Module 2: Perform a Gap Analysis
The Purpose
- Define the current security capabilities and maturity of the governance and management.
- Develop a security target state based on the organization’s security risk profile and conduct a gap analysis.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Visualize the organization’s current security capabilities and maturity level.
- Build the foundation for determining your security target state by understanding the organization’s security needs and scope.
Activities
Outputs
Assess current security capabilities and performance.
- Determined current security maturity levels.
Define security target state.
- Identified security target state.
Module 3: Develop Gap Initiatives
The Purpose
- Develop gap initiatives to reach your security governance and management target state.
- Assess the organization’s readiness to implement the gap initiatives and scale the initiatives to develop a feasible implementation plan.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Identified gap initiatives to augment the security program.
- Understanding of the resources needed to implement all the initiatives.
Activities
Outputs
Identify security gaps.
- Future state - current state gap analysis.
Build initiatives to bridge the gap.
- Initiatives to address the gap.
Estimate the resources needed.
- Estimated effort needed.
Prioritized gap initiatives.
- Budget & resource readiness analysis.
Determine start time and accountability.
Module 4: Implement Gap Initiatives
The Purpose
- Finalization and approval of the final roadmap and action plan.
- Development of various governance and management deliverables to lay the foundation in place.
- Development of effective metrics in order to measure the program.
Key Benefits Achieved
- Implementation timeline for the future.
- Governance and management deliverables to act as a starting point.
- Security metrics to implement.
Activities
Outputs
Finalize roadmap and action plan.
- Finalized roadmap and action plan.
Build out governance and management deliverables.
- Finalized governance and management deliverables, such as a charter, organizational structure, and HR security policy.
Develop security metrics.
- Effective security metrics.