Technology projects focused on information security and IT governance can vary greatly in size, complexity, and financial investment. Therefore, whenever your company begins implementing a new project, it's essential to assess the company's size, its maturity in utilizing technology resources, the availability of technical and human resources for execution, and the available investment budget.
From this context, we directed our analysis to the small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) market, which increasingly needs information security and good IT resource management. We observed a difficulty in evaluating the return on investment (ROI) in terms of making these projects viable. This is because, often, the return is not perceived due to a lack of monitoring metrics related to system performance, IT resource availability, security breaches or data loss, and tracking of team and employee productivity through technology.
This lack of management metrics focused on technology and resource use can often hide bottlenecks (problems) that compromise your company's competitiveness and results, such as high equipment maintenance costs, compromised task execution due to frequent equipment or system malfunctions, low team productivity due to wasted time using the internet and personal cell phones by employees, not to mention the risks that the loss of company or customer data can represent.
Therefore, we will address the benefits generated for companies from a good information security policy and IT governance.
Importance of Information Security
The first point to consider is the reasons why companies need security, which can be distinct and in some cases complementary.
Some companies implement information security policies due to the need to comply with regulatory standards, often applied to the company's sector of activity, such as financial institutions or accounting firms. In these cases, the value is entirely related to the need to protect financial and accounting information and customer data. As compliance with regulations is a requirement, investment in information security is part of the basic business costs and should be included in the company's strategic planning.
For companies with distributed units or operations, the greatest need becomes the availability of information between units and secure communication between them. It's common for branches to be connected to headquarters via management systems, and for confidential business data to flow through this communication. In these scenarios, information security becomes crucial, as it needs to guarantee the permanent availability of information while simultaneously ensuring that data cannot be intercepted. To estimate the value of security, one can consider the cost of a lack of communication between units, where business activities cannot be executed, often compromising core activities such as sales and customer service.
In the context of small and medium-sized enterprises, where the need for business information security may not be so easily perceived, it is necessary to estimate the impact of the loss or theft of business information, such as financial or customer data.
Among 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 the realm of security, another important point is the incidence of viruses on the network and the costs generated from this problem, such as the need for equipment maintenance and the idle time of employees due to the unavailability of equipment and systems.
Investing in information security is always a strategy aimed at preventing risk and losses. Therefore, when evaluating the return on investment, one must consider the potential losses or impact that security breaches could have on the company.
Some examples of tracking metrics and ROI could be measuring the expenses generated by IT professionals or companies from the maintenance of systems and equipment, and calculating the idle time of your employees due to systems and equipment being under maintenance or unavailable. Never forget to consider the impact that data loss can have on your company.
A good information security policy involves several points; first, it's necessary to educate employees about the risks and how to identify them . After that, the actions should cover three complementary points:
- Prevention : Protecting 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 fixing affected areas.
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. Often, simple and accessible measures can keep your company protected from most of the risks that exist on the network.
Managing internet access is one of those simple actions, as it's possible to prevent access to harmful websites online. Access to these sites can occur in various ways, such as users clicking on fake email messages. This type of access is currently the biggest entry point for viruses into companies.
Share 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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