What is a capability maturity review?
A Capability Maturity Review measures how your organisation’s information security practices are defined, implemented, and continually improved; it is particularly valuable for organisations looking to understand and improve their maturity level over time.
As a result of a Capability Maturity Review, you will understand how effective your security processes and controls are now, you will build a risk-based, prioritised roadmap for maturity improvement into the future, and you will have a framework that allows you to measure and verify your progress.
How does A capability maturity review benefit your business?
Do any of these sound familiar?
- I’ve been told we should buy this service or that product. Do I need it? And it’s expensive… what can I safely defer from my current budget to pay for it?
- Damn security! This hack, that threat, those solutions, their service… I just don’t know where to start!
- The board members want a path forward to reduce their liability but where do we start, and how do we know if we’re improving?
A Capability Maturity Review helps your organisations by allowing you to understand and improve the organisation’s maturity level over time and will deliver these benefits:
1. Get your bearings!
Maturity reviews are not pen tests or check lists; they are an assessment of an organisation’s overall level of maturity and so they take into account things like:
- The organization’s cybersecurity risk management strategy, expectations, and policy.
- The way that the organization identifies and manages cybersecurity risks and existing safeguards.
- How the organisation looks out for, detects and manages cybersecurity attacks and compromises.
No organisation is the same and each organisation has it’s own priorities, budgets and experience so step one is to agree on the most reasonable, cost-effective and efficient approach for assessing your organisation’s current level of security maturity, and we want to do this consistently and justifiably so you can later explain the maturity level to others, and also have a basis for measuring improvement into the future.
2. Plan your strategy, then implement it!
You completed the review of your organisation’s current level of security maturity in step 1 above. Now we use those results to begin the process of improvement:
- Prioritise control-improvements according to risk and cost.
- Undertake improvement work to address control shortcomings.
- Review progress iteratively; don’t risk time and money on big-bang efforts that need to be rolled back.
This can be critical for demonstrating due diligence to clients, partners, and regulators.
3. Benchmark and demonstrate your performance
You chose an appropriate framework in step 1 so you could get to this point!
Benchmark your maturity improvements at regular intervals by reviewing your implementation results using the same controls and framework that you used to understand your initial level of maturity.
Your organisation is now in a position to demonstrate to auditors, executives, insurers and parters the effectiveness of your maturity improvement work.
What next?
Are you ready to take the uncertainty out of your cybersecurity strategy, purchasing plans and risk-management goals? Do you want to be able to demonstrate the effectiveness of your security-improvement efforts with more confidence and certainty?
If so, give us a call. We’ll scope a project that meets your risk-management, time and budget goals. We’ll work with you to understand your current security maturity level now, and to build a risk-based, prioritised roadmap for maturity improvement into the future.
Buying products and services without a clear strategy has the potential to be a risky, painful and expensive experience, but with dotSec by your side, your maturity-improvement journey becomes a lot easier.