A roadmap for policies provides a clear and structured approach for implementing policies that align with an organization’s specific needs and requirements. A roadmap provides direction to an organisation and helps them prioritise which policies to implement first, and in what order, based on their current security posture and compliance requirements.
A roadmap also helps to ensure that policies are implemented in a consistent and controlled manner, and that they are reviewed and updated regularly to ensure that they continue to align with organizational policies and standards, and evolving needs and security threat landscape.
Additionally, a roadmap helps to ensure that resources are used in a secure, compliant, and cost-effective manner. It also helps to identify areas where resources are not being used in a consistent and controlled manner, and to address these gaps.
Furthermore, having a roadmap helps to move an organization from a reactive to a preventive approach, which means that organizations can proactively detect and respond to security threats, rather than waiting for a breach or incident to occur. This proactive approach reduces the risk and minimises the impact of incidents when they do occur.
In summary, a roadmap provides a clear plan of action, sets expectations, and helps to align the organization’s efforts towards a common goal of enhancing enterprise security, and it can help organizations to move forward in a structured and controlled way and reach a higher maturity level.
So how should an organisation go about creating a roadmap for itself ?
Here is a high-level roadmap that organizations can follow to start small with policies and incrementally build a more robust and comprehensive security posture:
- Assess current security posture: Conduct a security assessment to identify gaps in security and compliance, and to understand the current state of security in the organization. This will help identify areas where policies are needed and prioritize which policies should be implemented first.
- Start with basic policies: Implement basic policies that address the most critical security and compliance gaps identified in the assessment. For example, implementing policies for encryption, access control, geo-fencing resources, and logging will provide foundational security for resources.
- Build on basic policies: Once basic policies are in place, organizations can start building on them by implementing more advanced policies and processes to support security monitoring and incident response, vulnerability management, and threat protection.
- Enhance security posture: The next step is to focus on enhancing security posture by implementing more comprehensive policy initiatives that provide more advanced and wider security and compliance requirements. Organisation can either develop their own initiates or take advantage of built-in initiates such as ISO270001, NIST, etc. where Microsoft has done the mapping between the controls in these standards to technical controls available on Azure.
- Incorporate automation: Incorporate automation into policies to make them more efficient and effective. For example, using Azure Automation to automatically shut down resources during non-peak hours, or to automatically delete unused resources or to modify the resource configuration during deployment to make it compliant.
- Continuously monitor and review: Continuously monitor and review policies to ensure that they are effective and that they continue to align with organizational policies and standards. Make adjustments as needed to ensure that policies continue to meet the organization’s evolving security and compliance requirements.
- Move from reactive to preventive approach: As organizations move through these stages, they will be able to shift from a reactive to a preventive approach to security. This means that they will be able to proactively detect and respond to security threats, rather than waiting for a breach to occur.
- Including human training and capacity building as part of a roadmap for working with policies on Azure is a good idea. This can help ensure that the individuals who will be working with the policies understand how to properly implement and enforce them. This can include training on Azure’s policy management tools, as well as training on best practices for creating and managing policies. Additionally, providing ongoing support and resources for individuals to continue learning and developing their skills can also be beneficial.
It is important to note that this is a high-level roadmap and will need to be adapted to the specific needs and requirements of your organization. It is important to involve different teams and stakeholders within the organisation in the process to ensure that policies align with the organization’s needs and that they are adopted and followed by all teams.