Program Management or Operations?

About this interactive

The lesson starts with a Dr. Seuss story: someone is hired to watch a bee, then someone to watch the bee watcher, and so on. A security program needs that: somebody watching the watcher. The operational functions do the security work: patching, reviewing logs, removing leavers' accounts, scanning, training, restoring backups, and even auditing the accounts. Program management sits above them and asks whether it is all being done and kept up. - Policies: who reviews them, how often they are updated, and the maintenance they need. - An audit of the audits: the account audit is one of many audits. Program management checks that every planned audit actually happened, before the SOC auditors arrive. - In NIST SP 800-53, which this course is modeled on, the first control of each family is its policy and procedures, which governs the rest of the family. A whole family, Program Management (PM), covers the security program plan and the leadership roles. A quick test: is the task doing a piece of the security work, or checking and steering the program that does it? Security+ covers this under security governance.

What you'll learn

Tell program management, the oversight that checks the whole security program is being done and kept up, from the operational work it oversees
Recognize the program management tasks the lesson names: keeping policies reviewed and updated, an audit of the audits, the program plan and its leadership roles

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

5.1 Summarize elements of effective security governance.

NIST 800-53

PM-1 Information Security Program Plan

Key terms

Cybersecurity Program Management: The overarching coordination of people, budgets, roles, and resources across all security functions to ensure a unified and effective organizational security posture.
IT Audit: A systematic inspection of IT processes, controls, and systems to identify misalignments and verify that established procedures are being followed correctly.
Audit: A formal and systematic examination of an organization's systems, policies, and procedures to verify that security controls are in place, functioning as intended, and meeting applicable compliance requirements.

Topics

Cybersecurity Governance Program Management Nist 800 53 Interactive Streak Sort

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