Information Governance and Security

Therefore, organizations have over times invested heavily on information security which is now considered to be the success factor of organizations. In a recent study carried out by Ponemon Institute (2015), it was found out that organizations in the entire world lose billions of dollars annually as a result of information violations and breaches. Besides loses, breaches have adversely affected the customers’ trust and this affects the performance of organizations. Information Security Traditionally, information security deals with the aspects of integrity, confidentiality and availability. These aspects underlie services such as authorization, authentication, reliability and accountability. These layers include; • Physical security: This layer is to protect the organization’s physical objects, items and areas from unauthorized access and use. • Personnel security: This layer is to protect the individuals or group of individual that are allowed to access the organization and its operations.

• Operations security: To safeguard the details of given operations or the organization’s activities. • Communications security: To protect technology, communication media and other contents • Network security: To protect connections and networking connections. Once the organization has got all the aspects of information security considered and marked, it becomes easy for the organization to come up with rules and procedures that govern who manages information, how it is accessed, who has the authority to alter it and when the information can be destroyed. Thus, it has become essential for both private and public organizations to ensure security to their information for better organizational reputations and profits. Therefore, information security and governance is no an end in itself but it means to an end.

Information governance is therefore the cohesive approach to managing, controlling, processing, retrieving and archiving contents that record all the assets and processes of a business. This approach provides a governance framework that is compliant to organizational needs and one that meets global and corporate needs for information governance. Information governance has therefore become a part of business management in this information era (Microsoft). However, there are four aspects that must be met in order for Information governance to be achieved. The aspects include: 1. Compliance Most of the big businesses have people assigned specific roles like the Business Intelligence Officer or a Compliance Officer whose work is to ensure that the company complies with the set regulatory and statutory requirements. Even if they lack such officers, many companies have individuals who are tasked with ensuring the business complies with the day-to-day aspects of running the business.

There is a positive impact on the business’s work when Information management is implemented effectively. This can either be internally generated approaches or readily available external approaches that can suit the business. The world’s leading software company has evolved the services it offered around information governance. This evolution majorly factored in the retention capabilities of companies as well as their e-discovery capabilities. The company is now offering the Office 365, a collaboration and communications platform based in the cloud. This tool provides services such as data security, cross-border regulations, data preservation and archiving. The P&G management had thought that IT could be the best way to support data analysis in the entire company through provision of the required aid analysts and software tools thus playing the role of a central respiratory for the company.