Chapter 10: Security Management

The Following Comptia Security+ Exam Objectives are Covered in this Chapter:

• 5.6 Forensics (Awareness, conceptual knowledge and understanding—know what your role is)

  • 5.6.1 Chain of Custody

  • 5.6.2 Preservation of Evidence

  • 5.6.3 Collection of Evidence

• 5.8 Education – Training of end users, executives and HR

  • 5.8.1 Communication

  • 5.8.2 User Awareness

  • 5.8.3 Education

  • 5.8.4 Online Resources

• 5.9 Documentation

  • 5.9.1 Standards and Guidelines

  • 5.9.2 Systems Architecture

  • 5.9.3 Change Documentation

  • 5.9.4 Logs and Inventories

  • 5.9.5 Classification

    • 5.9.5.1 Notification

  • 5.9.6 Retention/Storage

  • 5.9.7 Destruction

Security management is the responsibility of everyone in an organization. The job requires the cooperation of every department and every individual in an organization. However, many people do not understand or know how to improve security. Your job is to help educate those people in your organization, to assist in policy development, to act as a consultant, and to be part of the security process. This means that you must become knowledgeable about best practices, change management, computer privacy and security laws, and incident response.

Think about it from this perspective: in a given software project, such as creating a new operating system, 1,000 programmers are working to create and perfect it. As soon as it hits the market, another 50,000 programmers, just as capable as those original 1,000 programmers, will be trying to figure out how to break it. You are square in the middle of this battle. Your best defense in this digital battle is to develop sound security policies and practices, and then enforce them vigilantly.

This chapter discusses the key elements of implementing, supporting, and maintaining security efforts in an organization. You will learn about the key aspects of best practices and documentation. You are faced with the task of keeping current in an environment that is changing constantly. Not only are the technologies changing very rapidly, but the laws that govern how we must protect our stakeholders are also changing rapidly.