Given our modern dependence on technology and security, no one would dare make that statement. Everyone knows how important security is and how it must be embedded in all activities of a company. One look at the news is all it takes to learn that the data breach of the day is related to an application vulnerability. Go to the information security department and you will hear about an employee’s recent mistake that resulted in a data loss. Security is a widespread issue, but security culture has not kept pace with the threat landscape.
Tim Ferriss defined culture as what happens when people are left to their own devices. This is true of safety culture when we include “certainly” in this definition: safety culture is what happens to safety when people are left to their own devices. Are they making the right decisions when faced with the question of whether to click a link? Do they know the steps to take to ensure a new product or offering is safe before delivery?
Building a healthy safety culture
A company’s safety culture must be nurtured and nurtured. It is not something that develops organically. You need to invest in a safe culture. A sustainable safety culture is more than just a single event. When a safety culture is sustainable, it transforms safety from a one-off event into a lifecycle that generates forever safety returns.
A sustainable safety culture has four key characteristics. First, it is purposeful and disruptive. The main goal of a safety culture is to promote change and better safety, so it must disrupt the organization and provide a set of measures to promote the changes. Second, it’s engaging and fun. Employees want to participate in a safety culture that is fun and challenging. Tech6 Third: It’s rewarding. For people to invest their time and effort, they need to know what they will get in return. Fourth: The investment pays off. The reason people care about security is to improve an offering and reduce vulnerabilities; we need to get back a multiple of the effort invested.
A strong security culture not only impacts day-to-day operations, it also dictates how security impacts the things your organization offers to others. These offers can be products, services or solutions, but they must be equipped with security in all parts. A sustainable safety culture is permanent. It is not a one-time event in the year, but embedded in all your activities. Why does an organization need a safety culture? The most important answer is something we all know deep down. In any system, people are always the weakest point. Safety culture is primarily for people, not computers. The computers do exactly what we tell them to do. The challenge is with the people who click on things they receive in email and believe everything they are told. People need a framework to understand what is right for security. In general, the people in your organization want to do the right thing – they just need to be taught.
Fortunately, no matter where an organization falls on the safety culture spectrum, there are things that can be done to improve the culture.
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Embedding the concept that safety applies to everyone
Many companies think that the security department is responsible for security. A sustainable safety culture requires everyone in the organization to participate. Everyone must feel that they are responsible for safety. This is a safe culture for everyone. Security belongs to everyone, from executives to lobby ambassadors. Everyone has a stake in the company’s safety solution and safety culture.
You can achieve this “all-in” mentality by incorporating security at the highest level into your vision and mission. This allows employees to see what to focus on. Update your vision or business goal to make it clear that security is non-negotiable. Discuss the importance of security at the highest level. This does not only mean the people who bear the title of security (CISO, CSO), but also other executives up to individual managers.
Focus on awareness and beyond
Security Awareness is the process by which your entire team learns basic security lessons. You must bring each individual’s ability to assess threats to a certain level before challenging them to understand the depth of the threats. Safety awareness gets a bad rap because of the mechanisms used to teach it. Posters and face-to-face meetings can be boring, but they don’t have to be. Bring some creativity to your reconnaissance efforts.
In addition to general sensitization, knowledge about application safety is also required. Application security awareness is aimed at the developers and testers within the organization. In your company, they may be located in the IT department or in the technical department. AppSec Awareness is teaching the advanced lessons employees need to know to build secure products and services.
Awareness is an ongoing activity, so never miss a good crisis. Bad things will happen to your business, and often they are directly related to a security issue. Use these educational moments to grow your safety culture. Don’t try to sweep them under the rug, use them as examples of how the team can get better.
Accountability before awareness is crazy. People want to do the right thing, so show them through an awareness program and then hold them accountable for the choices they make after gaining the knowledge.
If you don’t have a secure development lifecycle, adopt it now
The Secure Development Lifecycle (SDL) is the foundation for a sustainable security culture. An SDL is the process and activities that your organization agrees on for each software or system release. This includes things like security requirements, threat modeling, and security testing. The SDL answers the question of the how of your safety culture. It is a sustainable safety culture in action. Open a Private Browser for Web and Mac,can also help you to achieve security in your company. Customers across all industries are starting to demand the crazy idea that companies have and are following an SDL system. If you don’t have an SDL yet, Microsoft has released most of the details about its SDL for free. Many SDL programs in the industry go back to the Microsoft program.
A useful place for the SDL is to be found in a product safety office. If you don’t have a product safety office, you should seriously consider investing in one. This office is based in the development department and provides central resources to implement the parts of your safety culture. While we don’t want the entire company to turn safety over to the Product Safety Office, think of that office as a consultative body that teaches engineers the basics of safety.
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