reply to discussion below 8

Dana,

Red Clay Renovations is a very well-renowned organization famous for home renovation (King, 2018). With the focus of Red Clay Renovations being towards that of interior design, architecture, and other real estate-related fields, information technology must also be thought of in order to ensure true protection in terms of cybersecurity, with “culture shift” as a risk management strategy.

Risk management is a significant and important part of Red Clay Renovation’s company profile. Red Clay Renovations performs significant work for consumers’ homes, and thus, must mitigate all risk. This includes ensuring that all information technology defenses are significantly built, validated, and tested, as well as ensuring all physical and electronic data is properly stored and secured to ensure data integrity, authenticity, and validity. This is particularly important because of Red Clay’s reliance on web applications and technology to conduct business operations. This includes employees’ abilities to work from home, to even information stored on data servers within the Owing Mills, Maryland office.

The Secretary of Defense published the Department of Defense’s Cybersecurity Culture and Compliance Initiative in 2015 (Department of Defense, 2015). This initiative is a risk-management program implemented across all branches of military service within the Department of Defense. This initiative aimed to implement a variety of mandates to include no-notice inspections, and even incorporate real-life scenarios into unit training (Maucione, 2016). With organizations such as the Department of Defense taking such a forward-leaning stance on mitigating risk from cybersecurity threats, the argument must be made that Red Clay Renovations must do the same as well.

There are a variety of pros of utilizing “culture shift” as a risk management strategy. Some of the pros of this strategy include full scalability within an organization, as well as ensuring compliance at all levels. Full scalability within an organization means that every individual will be informed of the specific risk management measure, as everyone is a part of an organization’s specific culture shift. Additionally, compliance is ensured at all levels with a “culture shift” risk management strategy, with all individuals being required to adhere to such a “culture shift” in order to ensure full compliance with such strategy.

There are also a variety of cons of utilizing “culture shift” as a risk management strategy. Some of these cons include the risk of your culture shift being too overwhelming to an organization, resulting in the information being relatively ignored by many, as well as an emphasis on group conformity, as opposed to individual understanding of such risk management principles. When a culture shift is too overwhelming, many individuals within an organization will just ignore it, making such a principle just another training that must be completed. Additionally, while a “culture shift” approach ensures that everyone knows about a specific risk management principle, it does not drill down to specific individuals to ensure that they fully comprehend such a risk management strategy.

Therefore, there are a variety of pros and cons to utilizing “culture shift” as a risk management strategy. Nonetheless, it is important for Red Clay Renovations to implement some form of risk management strategy in order to best protect the company from cybersecurity threats.

References

Department of Defense. (2015). Department of Defense cybersecurity culture and compliance initiative (DC3I). Retrieved from http://www.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/OS…

King, V. J (2018). Red Clay Renovations Company Profile. Retrieved from https://learn.umuc.edu/d2l/le/content/349440/viewC…

Maucione, S. (2016). Cybersecurity culture shift is more than people, official says. Retrieved from https://federalnewsnetwork.com/cybersecurity/2016/…