Practices in information systems

The most crucial area of attention is improving information management procedures, and both private and public sector organizations should give it top priority. It is predicted that successful businesses in the coming five years would be those that employ digital technologies to reinvent their business processes due to the rapid growth of information technology (Savoie, 2016). By acting effectively and making choices quickly, these firms will have a direct positive impact on their customers.
An organization has a significant advantage over any possible market rivalry by developing and implementing a clear-cut IT strategic plan. It turns into a crucial distinguishing factor that distinguishes successful companies. Companies are required to document their IT strategic planning process, which includes listing the steps using involve enumerating the method with which the organization defines the program information needs and establish capabilities, systems and strategies to meet those needs (Savoie, 2016). Besides, the documentation process outlines the accountability and responsibilities for IT resources across the agency.

As part of the strategic plan, the organizations are expected to integrate its information security management processes with operational planning processes. Implementation of this strategic plan will improve the efficiency of business processes and, thus, boost its capacity to deliver new services and comply with the existing regulations.

For companies to undertake effective IT innovation to enhance its organizational processes, discipline and creativity should be fostered within the organization. The employees should be creative enough to challenge the existing assumptions and be able to create new and radical approaches to solve and address important problems.

The information technological changes must involve radical innovation that embraces new concepts which deviate from past practices and facilitate the development of processes or products based on a different set of scientific or engineering principles that open up entirely new potential applications and markets. These IT changes should offer new functional capabilities absent in previous versions of the service or product (Halpin et al., 2009). Particularly, these radical innovations should involve the commercialization of new technologies and products that possess the capability to influence the firm and the market in terms of its ability to create new businesses and deliver new benefits.

Organizations constantly face security threats that may negatively affect company’s growth. These threats are brought about by inherent vulnerabilities in the organization’s information system infrastructure that can expose the financial data to cyber criminals.

The major information security risk is the failure of an organization to establish corporate cyber security risks. Many firms usually fail to take into account their potential threats and the profile of cyber attackers. This unpreparedness makes the company fail to put in place necessary security measures to withstand the highly evolving cyber-attacks (Halpin et al., 2009). To mitigate this security risk the organizations must adopt a culture of investing in the control and prevention of cyber threats. It is expected that firms will factor in its decision making process research and adoption of new security systems as well as understand the nature of potential cyber-attacks. Thus helps them put in place appropriate safety measures.

The human factor is another internal information security risk that can expose organizations to cyber-attacks. This risk is less technological kind and it serves a major role in determining how weak or strong the firm’s information security defenses are. It is has become apparent that the workforce of a company in higher positions, for instance, those who serves management and executive roles are less likely to become malicious insiders (Savoie, 2016). Rather it has been established that the lower-level employees pose major security threat as they can share data and important information with cyber attackers. To mitigate this threat, the management should be vigilant in how they monitor and set the access levels of these employees. This internal security risk is a good indicator that organizations must reinforce its existing cyber security policy with a new approach that goes beyond the normal compliance checklist. As a way of improving the protection of sensitive information, the organizations must look both outside as well as inside to map and mitigate potential threats.

The external information security risks involve the exploits and vulnerabilities used by attackers to hack into the system of an organization. If an organization fails to enhance cyber security basics, it becomes easier for attackers to find a way of bypassing the weak links and gain access to important data (Halpin et al., 2009). Attackers mainly capitalize on these vulnerabilities. To mitigate this risk the organizations should encrypt its data as well as install up to date antivirus that completely block the potential avenues for hacking. Lack of proper recovery plan is another information security risk that may lead to extensive damage in the event of a cyber-attack.

Conclusion

As much as the organizations put in place appropriate measures to prevent potential attacks, there is also a need to establish a thorough plan that outlines how to minimize the damage if it occurs (Halpin et al., 2009). As shown by the statistics it is evident that most companies are not ready to handle such critical attacks. Therefore, in order to mitigate this security threat organization must establish appropriate recovery plan that can detect attack in its early stages and, thus, isolate and manage the threat more effectively.

References

Halpin, T., Krogstie, J., & Proper, E. (2009). Innovations in information systems modeling:

Methods and best practices. IGI Global.

Savoie, M. J. (2016). Building successful information systems: Five best practices to ensure

organizational effectiveness and profitability. New York, NY: Business Expert Press.