Governance before technology
Agencies and contractors frequently invest in tooling before establishing accountability. Without a named security executive, a current risk register and a decision path for exceptions, controls drift within a single reporting period.
- A named accountable security executive
- A maintained, risk-rated asset and information register
- A documented exception and waiver process with expiry dates
- Personnel security screening tied to access provisioning
- Annual control effectiveness testing with reported results
Make reporting boring
Effective security reporting is short, repetitive and comparable period on period. Executives should see the same five measures every quarter, with trend and exception commentary. Novel dashboards obscure deterioration.