Door Anoniem: Door Anoniem:
[knip goede samenvatting van verschillende richtingen in security en certificates ]
Hey goed stukje! Ik heb nog wel een vraag waar jij een antwoord op weet. Ik wil ook richting de IT Security, maar wil ook meer management kant op gaan. Uiteindelijke doel is om een CISO (of CSO) te zijn binnen een bedrijf. Heb je dan een aanrader? Ik krijg vaak gewoon te horen dat ik CISSP moet doen in dat geval, ben jij het hier mee eens of heb je ook alternatieven?
Mvg!
Ja - CISSP moet je dan zeker doen .
Maar een Chief (xyz) Officer is _vooral_ een senior manager . Het aandachtsgebied is secundair .
Doe ITIL, Prince2, Lean Six Sigma dingen, en indien mogelijk een MBA .
Leer heel goed Excel , Powerpoint en vooral leer/oefen in presenteren.
Op alle management lagen zijn dat nuttige / noodzakelijke vaardigheden.
CISSP helpt je meer twee of drie lagen onder het C niveau. Het is een leuke extra, en het helpt je wel met geloofwaardigheid naar beneden in de organisatie, maar je uiteindelijke benoeming tot CxO zal gaan om je management vaardigheden/netwerk en niet om je punten op een techniek certificaat.
Oh jee, een manager :). Ik zou zeggen: stap zo ver mogelijk af van de inhoud, weet overtuigend onzin uit te kramen, leer mensen manipuleren, richt je op plaatjes in plaats van de inhoud, leer vergaderen, leer overtuigend presenteren en doe je elleboogbeschermers alvast aan om iedereen die meent eerder aan de top te moeten komen dan jij een welgemikte knal a la Fedor Emelianenko te verkopen.
Sorry, ik liet me even gaan. Ik denk dat de persoon die initieel reageerde op je bericht het antwoord al gegeven heeft. Je stapt bij een managementfunctie noodgedwongen af van de echt diepe inhoud, en richt je veel meer op het afstemmen van business doelen met de security governance en security strategie van een bedrijf. Het verlaten van de hardcore techniek moet ook wel. Voor technici op de werkvloer is het tempo al amper bij te benen, maar dat is 10x zo erg als je een managementfunctie gaat bekleden en je alleen in de avonduren wat technische kennis op kunt doen. De grote lijnen zijn dan belangrijk. Een strategische of tactische richting uitstippelen is totaal wat anders dan het veilig inrichten van een RedHat machine of het afstemmen van een IDS om het aantal false positives naar beneden te krijgen. De eisen die bij grote organisaties aan een CISO gesteld worden liggen ook niet zozeer op het vlak van informatiebeveiliging an sich. Tuurlijk, een solide kennis van informatiebeveiliging helpt om mogelijke beveiligingsproblemen sneller te doorzien, beveiligingservaring mee te nemen in je besluitvorming, de weg te kennen in het bedrijf op gebied van beveiliging etc.
Voor een management functie komen echter ook andere aspecten naar voren, zoals inspireren (jazeker beste managers,
inspireren!), verkopen, vergaderen, overtuigend presenteren, budgetteren, verbinden, juridische en compliance kennis etc. Dat zijn zaken die je niet leert met een CISM of CISSP.
Even wat zoeken... hebbes. Ik heb hieronder wat aantekeningen geciteerd die ik heb gemaakt tijdens mijn CISM examenvoorbereidingen. Lees het maar eens door en vraag je jezelf dan af of dit de kant is die je op wilt gaan. Mij was vlug duidelijk dat dit niet is wat ik wil. Wel leuk om het een keer gezien te hebben.
Information security manager roles and responsibilities:
- Manage the risk to information assets.
- Develop a comprehensive understanding of threats the organization faces, its vulnerabilities and its risk profile. Linking realistic threats to key business objectives will direct executive attention to them.
- Direct efforts towards achievement of a standard set of security practices and establishment of security baselines proportionate to risk.
- Be aware of and understand the all organizational assurance functions.
- Make sure that the roles, responsibilities, scope and activities of the information security steering committee are clearly defined.
- Define/ develop the information security program and its subsequent management.
- Develop the security strategy with input from the key business units/ business process owners.
- Develop, collaborate and manage the information security risk management program to meet the defined objectives.
- Understanding the constraints that set the boundaries for developing a security strategy.
- Provide education and guidance to the executive management team (no decision making, but presentation of options and key decision support information - advisor)
- Educate the executive management team on visible executive involvement.
- Coordinate involvement of executive management in activities such as quarterly information risk reviews, new IS go/no-go meetings etc.
- Manage (financial) constraints, prioritizing and maximizing the effects of available resources in addition to working with management to develop additional resources. A skills inventory would help identify the available resources, any gaps and the training requirements for developing resources.
- Understanding the uses, benefits and constraints of the security technologies.
- Assess the impacts of any of the reasonably possible security failures of any third party that may become involved with the organization.
- Work with the personnel director to define security roles and responsibilities. Without well-defined roles and responsibilities in job descriptions, there cannot be accountability.
- Stay current with rules and regulations that impose mandatory requirements (e.g. retention requirements) and ensure compliance. Adherence to local regulations must always be the priority. Not following local regulations can prove detrimental to the group organization. Following local regulations only is incorrect since there needs to be some recognition of organization requirements.
- Ownership of standards. The last review date mentions in the standard is important information and confirms the currency of the standard, affirming that management has reviewed the standard to assure that nothing in the environment has changed that would necessitate an update to the standard.
- Take responsibility for maintaining liaisons with other risk management teams.
- Develop approaches to achieve a level of integration with the risk management activities of other parts of the organization, such as HR, audit, legal, facilities, compliance, privacy and physical security activities.
- Evaluate the available approaches to assess, analyze and mitigate risk in case these practices have not been established or are inadequate and seek to implement those that are the best for the organization.
- Introduce an appropriate structured methodology to help identify, evaluate, and minimize risk to the IT systems that support the organization's missions.
- Set up a regular, formal process in which risk assessments are performed at the organizational, system and application levels.
- Assure that there are measures (metrics) in place to assess the risk and the effectiveness of security measures.
- Explore and recommend to asset owners continuous manual and automated techniques to monitor the organization's risk.
- Develop a structure and process for the development of risk management initiatives and controls.
- Critically review and assess the current formal risk assessment process, existing management practices and processes to determine whether they meet current objectives and requirements.
- Consider the use of subscription services to leverage expertise of external service providers without assigning them responsibility for executing the security program (e.g. vulnerability alerting services).
- Interact with sources of new information about security products, services, threats, vulnerabilities, regulations, laws and management techniques.
- Knowledge of the existence of various risk management methodologies to determine the most suitable approach or combination of approaches for the organisation.
- Define resource requirements and establish a budget and timetable for applying risk analysis and identification methods. Although senior management should support and sponsor a risk analysis, the know-how and the management of the project will be with the security department/ information security manager. Therefore, the security manager should drive the risk analysis for an organization.
- Understand the business risk profile of the organization.
- Interface with other organizational assurance providers such as the insurance department.
- Determine if the organization's security plans and test plans require modification (based on events that ar emonitored and assessed).
- Detect ongoing organization changes to alter the use of valuation methodologies to best meet the needs as a result of these changes.
- Be aware of the location and access permissions for all information resources.
- Regarding outsourcing:
+ Ensure that the organization has appropriate controls and processes in place to facilitate outsourcing.
+ Ensure that there are appropriate information risk management clauses in the outsourcing contract.
+ Ensure that a risk assessment is performed for the process to be outsourced.
+ Ensure that an appropriate level of due diligence is performed prior to contract signing.
+ Manage the information risk for outsourced services on a day-to-day basis.
+ Ensure that material changes to the relationship are flagged and new risk assessments are performed as required.
+ Ensure that proper processes are followed when relationships are ended.
- Ensure that risk identification, analysis and mitigation activities are integrated into life cycle processes.
- Be up to date with proposed modifications that introduce new vulnerabilities and change the overall risk equation.
- Participate as a member of the change management committee.
- Ensure that all significant changes are subject to review and approval by security and meet policy and standards requirements.
- Manage the security reporting process to ensure that it takes place that the results are analyzed adequately and acted on appropriately in a timely manner. The link to business objectives is the most important element in a report that would be considered by management.
- Ensure users are educated in procedures and understand risk management processes.
- Develop defined objectives for the information security program and gain management and stakeholder consensus. - Develop a full security architecture to ensure the goals and desired outcomes of the security program are realized (in case the development is a major initiative or series of initiatives.)
- Understand organizational information risk.
- Select appropriate control objectives and standards.
- Agree on acceptable risk and risk tolerance.
- Define financial, operational and other constraints.
- Develop formal relationships with assurance providers and endeavour to integrate those activities with information security activities. For example: audit, QA, privacy, physical security risk management, change management, insurance, HR, business continuity, disaster recovery and possibly others.
- Develop monitoring processes and associated metrics to provide continuous reporting on the effectiveness of information security processes and controls.
- Understand and have a working knowledge of a number of management and process concepts, including: SDLC, requirements development, QA, project management, business process reengineering, budgeting, costing and financial issues, training needs assessments and approaches, personnel issues etc.
- Understand where a given technology fits into the basic prevention, detection, containment, reaction and recovery framework, and how it will serve to implement strategic elements.
- Invest considerable effort in gaining an understanding from those to report to regarding expectations, responsibilities, scope, authority, budget, reporting requirements etc.
- Work with IT, business units and other organizational units to ensure that operational needs are covered.
- Update the roles and responsibilities documentation as new tasks arise in operational component development.
- Make sure that all relevant processes are developed and implemented, such as issue escalation, management oversight and periodic quality assurance reviews.
- Establish a working rapport with the finance department to ensure a strong working relationship, support and compliance with financial policies and procedures.
- Work closely with HR leadership and adhere to established procedures to prevent legal liabilities and other types of risk.
- Work with the steering committee and executive management to determine priorities and to establish consensus on what project items may be delayed because of resource constraints.
- Maintain relationships with vendors most likely to be called upon when spikes in personnel demand occur.
- Make sure that executive management understands the risk implications of moving an initiative ahead without full security diligence.
- Collaborate with HR and business units to identify information security education needs.
- Be familiar with existing frameworks and major international standards for IT and security management (COBIT, ISO 27000) and be able to extract relevant elements to utilize for the management approach best suited to the organisation.
- Gain senior management support and organizational acceptance and compliance for the information security program's policies, standards and procedures.
- Ensure that the organization's life cycle processes incorporate information security.
- Ensure that the personnel within the security organization as well as other responsible organizations maintain the appropriate skill set needed to carry out the program functions.
- Plan communications, participate in committees and projects, and provide individual attention to the end users' or managers' needs.
- Take a methodical approach to developing and implementing the education and awareness program.
- Ensure that processes and infrastructure are available that address creation, approval, change, controlled distribution and retirement of documentation.
- Implement procedures for adding, modifying and in some cases retiring information security policies, standards, procedures and other documentation.
- Track proposed changes to policies for review in the appropriate forums.
- Prioritize the portfolio of projects in such a way that those that overlap are not delayed by each other, resources are appropriately allocated, and the results are smoothly integrated into or transitioned from existing operations.
- Ensure familiarity with the budgeting process and methods used by the organization. Cost-benefit analysis is the legitimate way to justify the ongoing security budget of the information security department. A brief explanation of the benefit of expenditures in the (annual information security) budget (to be submitted for management approval) helps to convey the context of how the purchases that are being requested meet goals and objectives, which in turn helps build credibility for the information security function or program. Explanations of benefits also help engage senior management in the supply of the information security program.
- Collaborate with PMO (project management office) and appropriate subject matter experts to help estimate costs for projects that start within the fiscal year.
- Execute oversight and monitoring of external providers of hardware and software, general supplies, and various services.
- Periodically reevaluate the effectiveness of the security program relative to the changes in organizational demands, environment and constraints.
- Evaluate the documented security objectives established for the information security program.
- Evaluate the management program itself (framework and components) against compulsory and/or voluntary compliance standards.
- Assess the level of financial, human and technical resources allocated to the program.
- Work with the security steering committee, senior management and other security stakeholders to establish the scope and approach of technical skills delivery in which the information security manager and security organization are expected to engage.
- Have a thorough understanding of security architecture, control implementation principles, and commonly implemented security processes and mechanisms.
- Understand and plan for the potential "domino effect" of cascading risk.
- Implement the principle of due diligence (= ensure that the basic components of a reasonable security program are in place).
- Be aware of the various standards for managing and controlling access to information resources, including standards by relevant regulatory bodies.
- Ensure there are no system or systems without policy-compliance owners.
- Provide oversight and ensure that policy compliance processes are properly designed.
- Make choices about the impact that achieving control objectives will have on the CIA of information resources.
- Analyze and communicate the impact of new threats and vulnerabilities on the organization's risk exposure.
- Be the process owner for outsourced security services.
- Develop approaches to integrate SDLC activities with information security activities.
- Validate technology choices in support of physical security processes, as well as ensure that policies and standards are developed to ensure adequate physical security.
- Ensure that the components of the technical security architecture are aligned with the organization's risk and threat postures as well as business requirements.
- Have a thorough understanding how to monitor security programs and controls on an ongoing basis.
- Implement procedures to measure the ongoing cost-effectiveness of security components.
- Consider the development of a central monitoring environment that provides analysts with visibility into all enterprise information resources.
- Conduct analysis of trends in security-related events such as attempted attack types or most frequently targeted resources.
- Pay close attention to funding issues and work on them on an ongoing basis.
- Be aware of the possibility of non-technical incidents that must be planned for and addressed.
- Plan for the range of incidents likely to disrupt the organization's business operations to an unacceptable extent.
- Understand the various activities involved in a response and recovery program.
- Identify what incident response capability is already in place as a basis for understanding the current state.
- Implement an escalation process to establish the events to be managed.
- Develop a communication plan (e.g. for crisis or event information) and escalation process in consultation with public relations, legal counsel and appropriate senior management to ensure the appropriateness of any information disclosures.
- Have processes defined for help desk personnel to distinguish a typical help desk request from a possible security incident.
- Develop event scenarios and test the response and recovery plans to ensure that team participants are familiar with their tasks and responsibilities.
- Ensure that information security is incorporated into all response and recovery plans.
- Information security will be properly aligned with the goals of the business only with the ability to understand and map organizational needs to enable security technologies.
- Defining and ratifying the classification structure of information assets is the primary role of the information security manager in the process of information classification within the organization. The final responsibility for deciding the classification levels rests with the data owners. The job of securing information assets is the responsibility of the data custodians.
- Review all disaster recovery and business continuity plans to ensure that any risk to information security resulting from execution of the plans are highlighted and treated appropriately.
- Coordinate the collected information from the damage assessment phase of the incident response process to provide needed information to senior management so they will be able to make an informed decision regarding whether to declare a disaster.
- Develop clear requirements and processes to provide notification and escalation criteria for events, risk or other circumstances to various parts of the organization. The development of severity criteria and educating personnel in their use is a key component. The escalation process in critical situations should involve the information security manager as the first contact so that appropriate escalation steps are invoked as necessary.
- Ensure that processes exist for security policy review, modification, management approval and dissemination to all stakeholders.
- Review contracts that have implications for information security.
- Assess the risk of outsourcing any activity or service and ensure that appropriate provisions exist in the contract.
- Understand the organization's structure and culture, as well as the types of communication that are most effective, in order to develop awareness and training programs that will be effective in the environment.
- Ensure that change management policies and processes exist and are documented, that they are followed and that security is considered an integral part of the process.
- Translating an information security strategy into a control architecture is an essential competence for the information security manager.
- Develop processes to rank and prioritize risk based on several factors such as corporate exposure to the threats and potential impact if a threat materializes.
- Define and ratify the classification structure of information assets.
- Drive the risk analysis for an organization (senior management should support and sponsor the risk assessment/ analysis)