Driving With the Brakes On

By Jon Collins

In a nutshell:

While much attention around information risk is on medium and large companies, recent
research from Freeform Dynamics suggests that smaller organisations are just as susceptible to
the risks. Indeed, in some cases organisations feel unconfident about how they take their
organisations forward. So, how can such concerns be dealt with? In this report, we look at how
management best practice and technology work in tandem to reduce the level of concerns.

Key points:

Factors such as regulation and use of sensitive data are having an influence on the level
of risk experienced by smaller companies. As a result, certain industry segments are
more susceptible than others, but they are not all taking their responsibilities seriously.
The knock-on effect of a lack of security is that smaller organisations do feel held back,
for example when it comes to adopting more distributed working practices, or how they
share information with suppliers and customers.
All the same, organisations are not necessarily making appropriate investments in terms
of management and technical capabilities. This can result in a vicious circle between
inaction on the one side, and feeling held back due to a lack of confidence on the other.
This is a solvable problem, but it needs to be solved through non-technical means in
parallel with technical means.
We can learn from the experiences of more forward-thinking organisations in terms of
what makes a difference, with factors including senior management buy-in, appropriate
policy setting and awareness rising across the workforce.