By Jim Hietala, VP, Business Development & Security, The Open Group
Last fall, The Open Group Security Forum fielded its first IT Risk Management Survey in conjunction with the Society of Information Risk Analysts (SIRA) and CXOWARE The purpose of the survey was to better understand how mature organizations are when it comes to IT Risk Management today. The survey also aimed to discover which risk management frameworks are currently most prevalent within organizations and how successful those frameworks are in measuring and managing risk.
Consisting of an online questionnaire that included both multiple choice and open text answer formats with questions, the survey explored a number of different parameters in regard to the principles, frameworks and processes organizations are using to manage risk. The sampling included more than 100 information technology and security executives, professionals, analysts and architects that have some responsibility for risk management, as well as full-time risk management professionals within their respective organizations.
Considering the fragmented state of security within most organizations today, it should not come as much surprise that the primary survey finding is that many organizations today are experiencing what might be called an identity crisis when it comes to IT Risk Management. Although many of the organizations surveyed generally believe their Risk Management teams and efforts are providing value to their organizations, they are also experiencing considerable difficulty when it comes to understanding, demonstrating and creating business value for those efforts.
This is likely due to the lack of a common definition for risk relative to IT Risk Management, in particular, as well as the resulting difficulty in communicating the value of something organizations are struggling to clearly define. In addition, the IT Risk Management teams among the companies surveyed do not have much visibility within their organizations and the departments to which they report are inconsistent across the organizations surveyed, with some reporting to senior management and others reporting to IT or to Risk Managers.
Today, Risk Management is becoming increasingly important for IT departments. With the increased digitalization of business and data becoming ever more valuable, companies of all shapes and sizes must begin looking to apply risk management principles to their IT infrastructure in order to guard against the potentially negative financial, competitive and reputational loss that data breaches may bring. A myriad of high-profile breaches at large retailers, financial services firms, entertainment companies and government agencies over the past couple of years serve as frightening examples of what can—and will—happen to more and more companies if they fail to better assess their vulnerability to risk.
This IT Risk Management survey essentially serves as a benchmark for the state of IT Risk Management today. When it comes to IT risk, the ways and means to manage it are still emerging, and IT Risk Management programs are still in the nascent stages within most organizations. We believe that there is not only a lot of room for growth within the discipline of IT Risk Management but are optimistic that organizations will continue to mature in this area as they learn to better understand and prove their intrinsic value within their organizations.
The full survey summary can be viewed here. We recommend that those interested in Risk Management review the full summary as there are a number of deeper observations explored there that look at the value risk teams believe they are providing to their organizations and the level of maturity of those organizations.
Jim Hietala, Open FAIR, CISSP, GSEC, is Vice President, Business Development and Security for The Open Group, where he manages the business team, as well as Security and Risk Management programs and standards activities, He has participated in the development of several industry standards including O-ISM3, O-ESA, O-RT (Risk Taxonomy Standard), O-RA (Risk Analysis Standard), and O-ACEML. He also led the development of compliance and audit guidance for the Cloud Security Alliance v2 publication.
Jim is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. He has participated in the SANS Analyst/Expert program, having written several research white papers and participated in several webcasts for SANS. He has also published numerous articles on information security, risk management, and compliance topics in publications including CSO, The ISSA Journal, Bank Accounting & Finance, Risk Factor, SC Magazine, and others.
An IT security industry veteran, he has held leadership roles at several IT security vendors.
Jim holds a B.S. in Marketing from Southern Illinois University.
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