What Is Security Management?

When we talk about Security Management, we mean the practice of systematically designing and operating repeatable business processes that help you achieve your security and business goals. In order to manage and implement these processes, they should live in a set of documentation, your Security Management program, which defines your basic business processes related to security. In other words, your Security Management program should act as a source of truth for what should be happening related to security, help you track what actually is happening, give you tools to help close the gap.

Aptible Comply includes a number of tools to help you automate security processes to remain compliant across your organization and reduce the manual workload for activities like Access Control Reviews and Asset Management.

Why It’s Important

Security Management is important because (1) it can help you protect data and, as a result, build trust with your partners and customers, and (2) it empowers you to be able to develop a culture of security at your organization. With an appropriate Security Management program in place, you will have everything you need to provide comprehensive, compelling answers to questions posed in vendor security assessments. Your potential partners will have the confidence they need to close a deal. You’ll be prepared for audits or certifications, such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, or HITRUST, and be able to lay a strong baseline for compliance with the GDPR, HIPAA, the CCPA, or whatever comes next. Here is everything you need to know as you begin to build your company’s first—or upgraded—Security Management program.

Making the Business Case for Creating a Security Management Program

Creating and implementing a Security Management program requires time and financial resources—both of which are scarce for most teams. In order to encourage teams to prioritize Security Management--and obtain buy-in from your leadership team--we recommend highlighting the strategic benefits that teams derive from it, including:

  • gaining access to new markets (and landing enterprise customers.)
  • breezing through vendor security assessments (VSAs.)
  • reducing your risk of regulatory investigation, enforcement, and fines.
  • reducing your risk of costly data breaches and lost customers.

Building A Better Model for Security

At Aptible, we stand behind the “process model” of security: managing security by organizing your security efforts into discrete business processes, then managing each individual process. To break it down simply, each process has several stages:

  • Design: Plan out your intended result in the form of a policy and accompanying procedures.
  • Operate: Take the output of Design and bring it to life by running those security processes.
  • Audit: Review whether your processes are working as expected, and fix or update them as needed.

At Aptible, we’re working to automate many of the manual processes involved with Security Management, such as the manual tasks associated with recurring access reviews. This automation will win back time for your team, and allow them to focus on what matters the most.

Feeling overwhelmed? Don’t worry. We wrote an entire guide on how to put Security Management into place at your company. Download it here or get in touch with us to learn more about how Aptible Comply and its compliance applications can help.

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