Enterprise Security Management

Too often organizations deal with security threats after they happen. These threats are dealt with in an ad-hoc manner, and even when threats are similar they may be dealt with in different ways at different times. Without a consistent strategy, recording the details may be overlooked, and some best practices may not be followed.

Enterprise security management (ESM) is a method focused on creating a security management framework, so that organizations can build up and sustain security for their system. ESM is a holistic approach that integrates policies, guidelines, responses and proactive as well as reactive measures for various risks.

ESM has a very broad outlook that pertains not only to computer security threats but also to any risks that may affect an organization's core business. This outlook may include:

• External security threats
• Internal sabotage or security threats
• Failed software development or system processes
• Deliberate or inadvertent mistakes made by employees

In practice, implementers of ESM first seek to redefine the following aspects of security:

• How is security viewed in the organization? ESM moves the organization from a technical-centered view to a business-centered view.
• How is security approached in the organization? An ESM approach is systematic, rather than irregular, and strategic, rather than reactive.
• How is security performed in the organization? ESM stresses the importance of sensing and reporting more than straight-forward monitoring.

Then, the implementers seek to acknowledge and define the risks that an organization faces. This stage addresses the questions that follow:

• What causes the risks?
• What businesses are affected by risk?
• What are the consequences?

Once the risks are well defined, implementers of ESM create a framework for organizations to manage this risk.

• Manage the threats
• Manage the impact of those threats

The goal of ESM is to achieve resiliency for the following aspects of the organization:

1. People
   • Educate employees
   • Train employees
2. Business Processes
   • Streamline processes
   • Try and use common resources for which risk analysis has been done
3. Information/Data
   • Provide checks for authorization and authentication
   • Access to only people who should have it
   • Redundancy of important data
4. Facilities
   • May include physical security
   • Devise contingency plans
5. Technology
   • Leveraging technology to provide solutions
   • Determining what tools can be used for defending, responding and analyzing security threats

In summary, ESM is a new area of research that aims to make security management for organizations a science, instead of the abstract and ad-hoc manner in which it is done today.

References

• CERT Resilency Engineering Research

Share your comments, feedback or questions about this article and other topics. Go to our blog  or our Facebook group .