Initially, when you’re starting to roll out an IT security and compliance program, it is important to get everybody involved. The way that you get everybody to buy in is to first of all understand, what is the endgame?
What it means by that is what does it look like if your organization was to be hacked or was to be attacked?
What does that mean to your customers, your profitability, and what does that mean to your job?
Are you going to be there tomorrow if this company’s primary is somehow attacked?
For example, if you can no longer produce electricity, that’s critical infrastructure to the entire country.
So it comes down to understanding your part in the in the organization that you work for, and how you can do your piece in the overall compliance program. Making sure what you do on daily basis doesn’t open that window of opportunity for an attack within your organization.
You start by doing best practices in cybersecurity. A lot of times where an organization is starting off, they already have had some idea of how they’re protecting the firm.
They use passwords, they control access to control rooms and stuff like that.
However, compliance will come on top of that. IT compliance is an assurance that you’re actually deploying the cybersecurity program that you should already have in place.
You’re always training to be part of a compliance program since you’re always looking for the next attack vector. It’s no different than the military or the government saying how if a terrorist was going to come into your country, how are they going to do it next?
So it’s more of a state of mind of preparedness and constantly having to keep up to date with new technologies.
Years ago, not everybody had cell phones and now cell phone is an attack vector. As culture evolves, your whole perspective on security is going to have to evolve.
Well, there are no tools out there today that will actually help you get compliant automatically. There are a lot of tools that you can use to help facilitate the compliant program. But, there is nothing out there that would allow you to just push a button and make it happen.
That’s why it’s so important to engage consultants early on. You can actually start to figure out how it’s going to look in your organization. How it’s going to roll out at your particular plant, and what it’s going to look like for you.
The beauty of an IT security and compliance program is that if it does if it does change, the fundamental underlying meaning behind a compliance program won’t change.
The fact that you’re trying to secure your facility from being vulnerable to outside attacks, will not change.
The technical controls that you apply will change from time to time.
Yet, some aspects will not change. For instance, the way that you bring people into the organization.
The small steps towards IT compliance will go along way for your firm; major changes will only occur during upgrading compliance systems.
For more guidelines on how to keep your firm IT compliant, contact us.