The Project Life Cycle, Nexus for Security Convergence

Nov 1, 2007 12:00 PM, BY MIKI CALERO, CISM, PMP

           

Challenges to be faced in achieving security convergence include identifying stakeholders and organizational influences. The project life cycle (PLC) brings these two key aspects together.

In 2005, the Alliance for Enterprise Security Risk Management (AESRM) commissioned a report titled Convergence of Enterprise Security Organizations. (The full report can be downloaded at www.asisonline.org/newsroom/alliance.pdf.) The report makes use of ASIS' definition of security convergence: “The identification of security risks and interdependencies between business functions and processes within the enterprise and the development of managed business process solutions to address those risks and interdependencies.”

Creating each of these unique business process solutions is a temporary endeavor — a project, as defined in the ANSI/PMI 99-001-2004 standard. This standard, commonly referred to as the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), provides a framework that you can leverage toward achieving security convergence. Within this framework, the PLC defines factors such as the phases that connect the beginning of a project to its end, what work to do in each phase and what authority stakeholders have.

Using as an example a technology-based implementation of a business process solution, the PLC would define:

• The phase in which IT begins development.

• At what point IT delivers the prototype of the solution for validation.

• Who in the Physical Security and Information Security departments validates the prototype.

With the growing understanding of project management and its increasing maturity at the organizational level, you may be able to leverage existing entities such as the Project Management Office (PMO). Taking it one step further, you could create a Program Management Office — also PMO, according to the PMBOK — that would ensure the successful implementation of security convergence in your organization.

Miki Calero is an associate member of the Security Executive Council. Visit www.csoexecutivecouncil.com for more information.

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