From Conflict to Collaboration

A recent article, “Negotiating With Internal Security Teams,”  addressed the frustrations tech teams face when collaborating with their internal security counterparts.

To overcome these challenges and achieve a balance between employee productivity and information security, organizations must adopt a business-context-based security approach.

However, it’s not just about balancing productivity and security; it’s also about finding the equilibrium between business risks and information security risks, and embracing agility in business while fostering a collaborative environment.

Understanding Business Risks: Business risks encompass various factors that can impact an organization’s bottom line, such as losing a deal with a new customer, production downtime, and other operational challenges. Balancing these risks with information security risks is essential for creating a comprehensive security strategy that supports organizational objectives.

Embracing Agility and Competitive Advantage Through Security Technologies: Besides mitigating risks, getting security right also means being agile and innovative in embracing new business opportunities. Companies that implement robust security measures can expand into new markets with stringent data privacy requirements, attract and retain clients who prioritize data security, develop innovative products and services that involve sensitive data, build partnerships and collaborations with other businesses that value data protection, and reduce liability and legal risks associated with data breaches.

Additionally, robust security facilitates digital transformation by enabling companies to confidently explore and adopt new technologies and digital strategies, fostering innovation and providing a competitive edge in their industries. By embracing agility and recognizing the competitive advantages offered by robust security technologies, companies can enhance their position in the market and seize new business opportunities.

Some security technologies, like data governance, can introduce competitive advantages in addition to risk reduction. For instance, if a company can provide assurance of data sovereignty, auditing capabilities, and control over data access while its competitors cannot, it gains a significant advantage in industries that prioritize compliance with regulations such as GDPR, HIPAA, and other data protection standards. By meeting and exceeding these compliance requirements, companies can differentiate themselves in a competitive landscape and quickly adapt to new opportunities.

Leveraging Organizational Context for Tailored Security Policies: To effectively strike this delicate balance, organizations must leverage their unique context to create tailored security policies. This involves understanding the business, mapping sensitive data, and identifying legitimate actions based on the business context. By doing so, companies can implement security measures that are not only effective but also adapt to the organization’s needs and risk profile.

Achieving the Balance Between Business Risks and Information Security Risks: To achieve the right balance between business risks and information security risks, organizations should consider the following steps:

1. Understand the Business: Security teams must work closely with other departments to gain insights into their processes, challenges, and goals. This understanding will help them identify potential risks and create security policies that align with the organization’s objectives.

2. Map Sensitive Data: Identify and classify sensitive data within the organization and understand its location, access patterns, and usage. This information will help prioritize security measures for different types of data and ensure that security policies adequately protect what’s most valuable to the business.

3. Define Legitimate Actions Based on Business Context: Recognize which actions are necessary for the smooth operation of the business and which ones pose potential security risks. By understanding the business context, security teams can create dynamic policies that allow for necessary actions while mitigating risks.

Embracing AI to Strengthen Business Context: Alongside leveraging organizational context, embracing AI plays a pivotal role in attaining the delicate equilibrium between business risks, productivity, and information security. By integrating primary collaboration tools such as O365, Slack, Github, or Google Workspace through APIs, sophisticated analytics can process historical data, training algorithms that persistently learn and adapt to the organization’s distinct activities and potential security threats.

Reco is an AI-driven business-context-aware security solution tailored specifically for security teams. By harnessing the power of AI, Reco assists security teams in comprehending the business landscape, mapping sensitive data, and determining legitimate actions based on the unique context of the organization.

1. Gain Visibility into Business Processes: Reco provides real-time visibility into user activities within SaaS applications, allowing security teams to monitor potential security risks and ensure compliance with organizational policies.

2. Automate Context-Based Security Policies: Reco enables security teams to enforce dynamic, context-based security policies that align with the organization’s risk profile and adapt to changing business needs.

3. Collaborate with Other Departments: Reco facilitates collaboration between security teams and other departments, fostering a culture of shared responsibility for security and promoting a deeper understanding of the organization’s unique context.

Achieving the right balance between employee productivity, business risks, information security risks, and embracing agility in business requires a context-driven approach to security that promotes collaboration. By leveraging their unique organizational context combined with the power of AI, companies can create tailored security policies that protect sensitive data without hindering productivity.

Understanding and managing business risks, as well as capitalizing on the competitive advantages offered by robust security technologies, enable organizations to seize new business opportunities and stay ahead in their industries.

Solutions like Reco provide security teams with the necessary tools and insights to understand the business context, implement dynamic, effective security measures, and strike the delicate balance between risk management, collaboration, and business success.