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Managers Guides

Our first publication in this series - Managers Guide to Information Security, sub-titled "What to look for when you buy" - presents the top-level guidance we think they need. It is a no-nonsense guide to the use of information security in a real business, explaining in non-technical language what information security is about, sufficient to enable non-technologist business decision-makers to understand what to expect and what to check about security solutions that they are invited to buy for their business IT operations.

We believe that MGIS is unique among so-called business guides for several reasons, but primarily because it explains what business benefits a business manger should look to achieve from using information security solutions/products, and points out ways to assess the value of  these solutions/products to their business operation. It describes what business value they may expect without requiring them to understand how the different security technologies work.

Further Managers Guides

We plan to publish further Guides that explain in similarly accessible language the business benefits and value of other information security technologies. For more information on these, see the Managers Guides project page.

Why More Guides?

Our initiative to publish a series of Managers Guides on information security topics was stimulated by a realization that there are many IT security products available in the marketplace but very little guidance for the non-technical business manager facing decisions on which product(s) will deliver the right security for their business IT operations.

Other Sources of Guides

A search on the Web will produce many highly qualified sources of Guides and Best Practice publications on IT security. Many of these are listed in our "Links" file (left column hot link).

However, they all take a different approach to us, in that after a relatively short introduction in which they try to position the particular security topic (in a brief "this is what it does for you" style), they spend most of their pages explaining in simplified terms how the underlying technology works and what the related specifications and standards are. This is good for a reader who wants to know how it works and what the underpinning technical reference documents are, but does not help a business decision-maker who wants to know how using that security technology will improve their business operations, profit, efficiency, conformance to policy & regulations/legislation, reduce legal liability, etc.

Why Ours are Different

However, our focus is precisely the non-technologist business manager, whose prime concern is to have the right tools and technology resources to perform their core business operations with optimum efficiency. They want to know in as brief a read as possible how to make sound decisions on buying the right information security for their business:

• how to assess how a security solution will improve his business's profitability?
• what benefits to expect when they do buy a solution, as measured by productivity (increased revenues compared to what it costs to buy, to install, and to use)
• how to then check that those benefits are achieved.

This is what our Managers Guides series provides, in less than 50 pages of an easy-to-read pocket-size paperback.