Implement Whole-of-Government Cybersecurity Governance

Keeping up with the rapid pace of technological advancements and the ever-evolving threat landscape of cyberattacks presents an ongoing challenge for government agencies at all levels.
Government agencies face an array of sophisticated threats, including ransomware, phishing, and zero-day exploits, and must protect against security threats.
Implementing robust cybersecurity measures within the governance framework has become a critical priority.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

Good governance stems from a deep understanding of how stakeholder groups interact with each other and their respective accountabilities and responsibilities. Without these things, organizational functions tend to interfere with each other, blurring the lines between governance and management and promoting ad hoc decision making that undermines governance.

Impact and Result

The first phase of this project will help you establish or refine your security governance and management by determining the accountabilities, responsibilities, and key interactions of your stake holder groups.
In phase two, the project will guide you through the implementation of essential governance processes: setting up a steering committee, determining risk appetite, and developing a policy exception-handling process.

Implement Whole-of-Government Cybersecurity Governance Research & Tools

1. Implement Whole-of-Government Cybersecurity Governance Deck – A step-by-step guide to help you establish or refine the governance model for your government agency security program.

This storyboard will take you through the steps to develop a security governance and management model and implement essential governance processes. This project will involve evaluating your governance and management needs, aligning with agency security strategy and goals, and building a model based on these inputs.

2. Design Your Governance Model – Security governance and management model to track accountabilities, responsibilities, and stakeholder interactions, as well as implementation of key governance processes.

This tool will help you determine governance and management accountabilities and responsibilities and use them to build a visual governance and management model.

3. Organizational Structure Template – Use this tool to address structural issues that may affect your new governance and management model.

This template will help you implement or revise your agency structure.

4. Information Security Steering Committee Charter & RACI – to formalize the role of your steering committee and the oversight it will provide.

These templates will help you determine the role a steering committee will play in your governance and management model.

5. Security Policy Lifecycle Template – A template to help you model your policy lifecycle.

Once this governing document is customized, ensure the appropriate security policies are developed as well.

6. Security Policy Exception Approval Process Templates – Templates to establish an approval process for policy exceptions and bolster policy governance and risk management.

These templates will serve as the foundation of your security policy exception approval processes.

7. Security Research Program – An executive level presentation that details each strategic component of a comprehensive security program – governance, prevention, detection & response, and data privacy.

This program deck will provide a detailed overview of your government agency cybersecurity program.

Implement Whole-of-Government Cybersecurity Governance visualization

Rethinking how governments provide cybersecurity services at all levels, moving toward a “whole-of-government” integrated model.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Table of Contents

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Get the help you need in this 2-phase advisory process. You'll receive 8 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Design Your Governance Model

Call 1: Scope requirements, objectives, and your specific challenges.
Call 2: Determine governance requirements.
Call 3: Review governance model.

Guided Implementation 2: Implement Essential Governance Processes

Call 1: Determine KPIs.
Call 2: Stand up steering committee.
Call 3: Set risk appetite.
Call 4: Establish policy lifecycle.
Call 5: Revise exception-handing process.

Author

Neal Rosenblatt

Contributors

Kate Wood, Cybersecurity Practice Lead
Logan Rohde, Cybersecurity Advisor

Search Code: 106382
Last Revised: December 11, 2024