Creating your Information Security Strategy brings confidence and optimism to an organization, as the cybersecurity environment can be terrifying for a small business. But it doesn’t take long for that same company to drive on without keeping that plan updated and keeping their business protected. That’s why it’s important to do a mid-year review -- assess your plan, your goals, and make key adjustments. Here’s what we recommend.
When you first created your information security plan, you started with your company goals. Goals change. You achieve some goals, abandon some, and update the rest. The first place to start with your Security Strategy update is to update your goals and how your security technology is going to enable you to achieve them.
The other parts of your technology plan need to be updated as well. These include:
Once you have done a thorough assessment of your Information Security Strategy, you’ll identify key updates and changes to the plan. You’ll need to allocate resources, a timeline, and a budget to these changes, just like you did when creating the original plan.
Each of the above will likely require updates to your overall strategy and your documents and procedures.
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.” That was General Patton. The point is not to let all this work sit on a desk without getting put into practice. When it comes to your information security strategy, letting it get stale creates serious vulnerabilities.
Take the agreed-upon timelines and budgets and start executing. Create target dates and progress update meetings. These updates will likely be much smoother and faster than the original plan, so don’t put it off.
Since automation is at the heart of everything we do, we’d be remiss not to mention this part, too. As you do your assessments and adjustments, it is important to evaluate how your automations are working for you. As your business grows and changes, automations will need to match those changes -- both for business performance and for continued security.
We can’t stress enough how important a mid-year review and update of your Information Security Strategy is for a business like yours. Technology often outpaces business processes. That can create a gap in security. By making a mid-year review part of your overall plans, you’ll keep your strategy updated and protect that key data and information. And that will rebuild that confidence and optimism you first created when you put together your initial strategy.
We have the tools to help you do a thorough assessment.