Information Security Considerations
As with so many other things in life, the key to effective information security is to work smarter, not harder. And in this case, working smarter means investing your valuable time, money and human resources on addressing the specific problems that are the most likely to cause the most damage. The math is really quite simple. But before you can do the sums, you have to identify the variables. Here are some of the questions you’ll have to ask yourself:
- What are the resources - Information & Information Systems - I’m actually interested in protecting?
- What is the value of those resources, monetary or otherwise?
- What are the all the possible threats that that those resources face?
- What is the likelihood of those threats being realized?
- What would be the impact of those threats on my business or personal life, if they were realized?
Having answered the five questions above, you can then investigate mechanisms (both technical and procedural) that might address those risks, and then weigh up the cost of each possible solution against the potential impact of the threat. Once again, the math is simple: if the cost of the solution is higher then the potential financial impact of the risk (or risks) being addressed, then one may need to investigate other solutions, consider accepting and living with a part of the risk, or accepting and living with the risk completely.
