| Business Need
Security Forensics Corporate Messaging Architecture starts with
identifying your Business Need. Understanding your business
drivers, the mechanisms that enable your day-to-day operations
flow and exactly how each individual department within your organization
communicates will allow Security Forensics to establish the foundation
from which we will be able drive security policy and protocol.
Each department within an organization is seen as either a cost-center
or revenue generator, as thus policy would be determined by departmental
need. Customer Support for example would have more need for interaction
with relationship management tools, than Legal would. Add the
communication between your customers and Customer Support, would
need to be followed more stringently. Security Forensics Business
Needs approach first focuses on a myopic view, drilling deep into
each department first, then would encompass and blend together
the entire enterprise.
Companies walk a tight rope of being seen as either "Big Brother"
when analyzing employee e-Mails or potentially worse; being too
passive by ignoring email productivity and utilization problems,
sexual harassment issues in an electronic work place and corporate
espionage facilitated through email and attachments. What makes
it a tight rope versus a fine line is, how good is your safety
net to protect the company brand, intellectual property, compliance
to Federal laws, remediation, Errors and Omissions costs, sexual
harassment, and contractual commitments in email? The liability
exposure and costs consequence to companies determines how hard
the fall or how soft landing.
Quantify Business Risks
By quantifying business risk we determine costs associated with
claims against an organization and a fact based policy driven
by organizational demand. We look at layout of cost determinants
pertaining to Sexual Harassment Claims, Trademark and Patent Infringement
Suits, Sabotage and Internal Security Breaches, External Cracker
and Hacker Attacks, Lost Productivity, Wasted Computer Resources,
cost of Viruses, Worms, Trojans and Malicious code, Lengthy Business
Interruption, Six-Figure Fines and Jail Time for Software Piracy,
Million Dollar Legal Fees and Settlements, Media Scrutiny and
cost to an organization based on Public Embarrassment
Next, we access new business risks introduced by adding additional
technology components such as wireless access, software applications
and hardware. Using the needs defined above to pinpoint exposure,
cost variables and day-to-day operations we will determine, what
private or sensitive information do these resources contain? We
will produce a list of informational assets that must be defended
against corruption, loss, theft, disclosure and compliancy, which
in turn would effect the probability of compromise and the overall
cost to your organization.
Audit Current Usage, Analyze and Define Policy
In this phase of Security Forensics methodology, we will work
with a team environment and use the latest tools available to
perform an audit of your organizations e-Mail architecture and
your enterprise architecture to ascertain specific lapses of security
protocol and lapses of Federal Regulated compliancy in your enterprise.
Our team approach will include a diagnostic overview of your current
policies and interviews with your Legal and Human Resources department,
with Security Forensics findings being provided to your executive
team and your Legal and Human Resources Directors. The audit will
provide information pertaining to compliancy, when, where and
how compliancy has been enforced on every unique communication
that has or will take place in your enterprise. We will review
your organizations retention policy based on journaling and archiving
and determine what categories of messages should be placed in
your archive based on stipulations pertaining to Federal Regulated
mandates. The information gathered up to this point will determine
best practices moving forward for an enterprise wide policy that
encompasses all departments and compliancy within your organization.
Implement and Follow-up
When all defined pieces of our evaluation and interviews have
been completed, Security Forensics will write an outline of each
policy (e-mail and enterprise wide) and forward on to the named
executive in charge that has the responsibilities to enforce these
policies. With their signature on buy-off, Security Forensics
will develop the final copy. A preamble will be written explaining
to each department and employee of the policy, why the policy
has been written and the current laws pertaining to security and
the mandates put into place by state and governmental agencies.
The final policy will also include:
1. Policy that prohibits employees
from using company computer assets to visit inappropriate sites,
or upload or download objectionable material from the Internet.
2. Security Forensics will clearly
communicate the fact that the organization's computer resources
are not to be wasted, but are to be used strictly for approved,
business purposes.
3. We will enforce cyber-language
and content guidelines designed to keep copy clean and clear.
An electronic and a hardcopy of the policy will be sent.
As part of Security Forensics commitment our customers, 14-days
after the policy has been put into place a re-visit, either by
phone or on-site will be scheduled to make sure all aspect of
the policy are being followed. In addition, we also provide policy
training to key departmental heads, managers and executives and
any other employee to help educate the importance of the policy
and the repercussions to the organization if the policies are
not followed. Don't expect your employees to train themselves.
Reinforce your Policies with on-going employee education. |