Information security management

Information security management (ISM) describes controls that an organization needs to implement to ensure that it is sensibly protecting the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of assets from threats and vulnerabilities. By extension, ISM includes information risk management, a process which involves the assessment of the risks an organization must deal with in the management and protection of assets, as well as the dissemination of the risks to all appropriate stakeholders. This of course requires proper asset identification and valuation steps, including evaluating the value of confidentiality, integrity, availability, and replacement of assets. As part of information security management, an organization may implement an information security management system and other best practices found in the ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27002, and ISO/IEC 27035 standards on information security. Information security management (ISM) describes controls that an organization needs to implement to ensure that it is sensibly protecting the confidentiality, availability, and integrity of assets from threats and vulnerabilities. By extension, ISM includes information risk management, a process which involves the assessment of the risks an organization must deal with in the management and protection of assets, as well as the dissemination of the risks to all appropriate stakeholders. This of course requires proper asset identification and valuation steps, including evaluating the value of confidentiality, integrity, availability, and replacement of assets. As part of information security management, an organization may implement an information security management system and other best practices found in the ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27002, and ISO/IEC 27035 standards on information security. Managing information security in essence means managing and mitigating the various threats and vulnerabilities to assets, while at the same time balancing the management effort expended on potential threats and vulnerabilities by gauging the probability of them actually occurring. A meteorite crashing into a server room is certainly a threat, for example, but an information security officer will likely put little effort into preparing for such a threat. After appropriate asset identification and valuation has occurred, risk management and mitigation of those assets involves the analysis of the following issues: Once a threat and/or vulnerability has been identified and assessed as having sufficient impact/likelihood to information assets, a mitigation plan can be enacted. The mitigation method chosen largely depends on which of the seven information technology (IT) domains the threat and/or vulnerability resides in. The threat of user apathy toward security policies (the user domain) will require a much different mitigation plan than one used to limit the threat of unauthorized probing and scanning of a network (the LAN-to-WAN domain). The information security management system (ISMS) represents the collation of all the interrelated/interacting information security elements of an organization so as to ensure policies, procedures, and objectives can be created, implemented, communicated, and evaluated to better guarantee an organization's overall information security. This system is typically influenced by organization's needs, objectives, security requirements, size, and processes. An ISMS includes and lends to effective risk management and mitigation strategies. Additionally, an organization's adoption of an ISMS largely indicates that it is systematically identifying, assessing, and managing information security risks and 'will be capable of successfully addressing information confidentiality, integrity, and availability requirements.' However, the human factors associated with ISMS development, implementation, and practice (the user domain) must also be considered to best ensure the ISMS' ultimate success. Implementing effective information security management (including risk management and mitigation) requires a management strategy that takes note of the following: