With the rapid growth of information technology and a rising digital society, it is increasingly becoming more critical for various businesses and organizations to protect their product and intellectual property that make them profitable. Such resources are valuable, but organizations are not doing enough to safeguard them. Due to the rising security issues that come with information development, organizations and businesses need to use the Information Security Management System (ISMS) within their environments to minimize risk and maintain the competitive edge by quickly responding to threats that emanate from security breaches. An Information Security Management System (ISMS) is a set of measures and guidelines that analytically manage its complex data. The ISMS system also tackles staff issues, technology, and data.
ISO/IEC 27000 Family of Standards for Information Security Management Systems
ISO/IEC 27000 is a combination of standards that provide an information security management framework. The ISO/IEC 27000 standard is developed to ensure that businesses retain their valuable assets, maintain security, and safeguard proprietary information. These standards can apply across organizations of varying sizes. As a result of their dynamism, these standards will change as technology develops. This implies that new measures ought to be created to safeguard information through the use of new technologies. The ISO/IEC 27000 consists of an overview of terminology utilized in ISO/IEC 270001 while ISO/IEC 27002 guides the business in executing ISO/IEC 27001 management practices.
To meet the ISO/IEC 27001 demands, it is significant to timely assess the ISMS of an organization. As part of the assessment, the ISO/IEC 27001 certificate is awarded to the ISMS of the business upon formal audit completion by the compliance group. After three years, this certificate expires, and the ISMS has to be re-certified to obtain a new certificate. During these three years, an organization cannot afford to be complacent, and it has to work hard to ensure that their ISMS remain complaint, improves over time, and operate as expected. A progressive monitoring audit should be conducted once a year to maintain organization certification. Because the audit validates a portion of the ISMS, a complete audit of the whole ISMS would be carried for re-certification.
ISACA’s Control Objectives for Information Technology (COBIT) version 5
COBIT 5 offers a system that supports managers in the management and regulation of the company IT. The framework lays out practices, models, principles, and tools that are internationally accepted and recognized. COBIT 5 conveys and maintains the company objectives and strategy. Therefore, this framework can be used by companies of different scales and industry. Numerous companies utilize COBIT 5 because it is an industry standard that is recognized and accepted worldwide. COBIT 5 is preferred to ISO because it is more of controls and checklists. The framework not only concentrates on IT security and operations but also fosters corporate governance efficient applications as well as management systems. COBIT 5 also focuses on the entire business process making sure that significant process steps are not missed. Finally, the framework also takes into consideration the interests of both internal and external users.
The COBIT 5 framework has five principles. These principles include; meeting stakeholders’ needs, applying a single integrated framework, end-to-end enterprise coverage, separating governance from management, and enabling a holistic approach. The COBIT 5 framework benefits outweigh numerous benefits from other similar systems. In most cases, companies that use COBIT 5 can exert direct control over the business’s performance from an operational and strategic perspective. Likewise, the framework contributes to cost decrease and enhances system dependability. Additionally, COBIT 5 minimizes unreliable data, project failure, breaches of security, and service loss. As indicated by (), COBIT 5 framework encourages enforcement that simplifies businesses’ ability to present how it complies, enhancing stakeholders’ appeal.
NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) framework is a framework that is implemented by companies to minimize cyber risks to critical infrastructure. NIST complex nature enables it to be implemented in any company because it involves a framework that companies can adapt to their specifications. The five foundational processes of NIST CSF include recovering, protecting, identifying, detecting, and responding. The first process of the NIST CSF is identifying. The process starts when the organization identifies data and systems that collect, process, and distribute information. The identification of systems and data offers an inventory of software and hardware. This process also assists companies to locate vulnerabilities in the system.
Apart from identifying data and systems, the system also requires organizations to be vigilant and less reactive. It is easier and cost-effective to prevent cybersecurity risks than responding to them after a network has been compromised. On the other hand, detection, a step of NIST CSF encourages managers to act because it motivates them to identify cybersecurity issues. The response guidelines of NIST CSF direct managers on how to respond to different situations to enhance efficiency. The NIST CSF frameworks assist businesses by encouraging them to recover after the occurrence of a compromise. If something happens in the company, the company will have to discover what happened, its reasons, and changes that can be done to prevent unwanted events from happening. As much as NIST CSF is complete and recognized, every company has different liabilities and risks.
E-commerce Risk Management
As electronic transactions continue to be used by many people, associated risks such as hacking, intellectual property issues, fraud websites, credit card theft, and hacking have been on the rising. Risk management in ecommerce can be minimized by educating people about ecommerce. It is significant to inform people about ecommerce risks to make them ready for all the threats. Apart from educating people, organizations should implement fraud prevention tools such as address verification, getting authorization approval for all transactions, and making them understand the reasons for customers charging back to avoid future fraud cases.
Since COBIT 5 standard, NIST CSF and ISO/IEC 27000 provide security to customers, and online businesses, businesses, or people that rely on these frameworks should acknowledge these frameworks because they represent information regarding risks. For companies to effectively handle ecommerce risk and security privacy rights, these businesses need to accept the framework’s IT governance and management.
Conclusively, with technology increase and the ever-transforming IT world, organizations must safeguard themselves from various threats, particularly cyber threats. Competitive advantages and trade secrets are particularly attractive targets, and therefore, companies should develop adequate protection levels to protect them against cyber threats. Even though these assets are valuable to companies, they are not sufficiently protected. Companies also need to leverage the ISMS. This is where ISO requirement applications by the management, NIST CSF, COBIT 5, or a combination of some or all these frameworks can be utilized to benefit the company. An organization’s operation can be adequately sustained if the frameworks mentioned above are put in place to defend the organization against cyber threats while maintaining security protection. Therefore, the management’s work should ensure that all is done to provide the company’s safety and sustainability or business they are entrusted with.