Risk is part of doing business; the question isn’t whether your organization will face it, but how prepared you’ll be when it does. A proper risk mitigation strategy reduces the likelihood of disruptions, limiting their impact and helping your organization recover quickly when something goes wrong.
Information is one of your organization’s most valuable assets, making it one of the biggest sources of risk if it isn’t properly managed. From cyberattacks and human error to compliance issues and unauthorized access, the threats are constantly evolving.
Adopting the following five practices can significantly strengthen your information security and governance posture and improve your overall resilience.
Cyber threats evolve every day, and attackers are constantly looking for new ways to exploit weaknesses. Penetration testing gives organizations a chance to identify those weaknesses before someone else does. Some companies may balk at the price tag, but it’s worth it: organizations that conduct quarterly penetration tests experience breach rates 53% lower than those that test annually or less frequently, and 68% of breached organizations admitted they had not conducted a penetration test in the year prior to the incident.
Working with a qualified third-party security partner provides an objective assessment of your environment. A thorough penetration test should evaluate networks, applications, cloud environments, and any location where sensitive information or personally identifiable information (PII) may reside. It should also examine systems that support mission-critical business operations.
The final report will identify vulnerabilities, prioritize risk, and provide actionable recommendations, so your team can strengthen defenses before those weaknesses become costly incidents. Regular testing helps ensure security measures keep pace as systems and threats continue to change.
In this session, we explore how information governance teams can move from retention policy to defensible action by identifying what information they hold, determining what’s eligible for disposition, managing exceptions such as legal holds or business value, and documenting deletion…
Even the strongest technical safeguards can be undermined by a simple mistake. Whether it’s clicking a phishing email, sharing credentials, mishandling sensitive files, or falling victim to social engineering, employees remain one of the most common entry points for security incidents. According to the 2026 Verizon Data Breach Report, 62% of all breaches include a human element. This figure has held between 60% and 74% since 2023, creating a years-long pattern.
That’s why security awareness cannot be treated as a one-time onboarding exercise. Ongoing training keeps employees informed about emerging threats and reinforces the everyday habits that help protect organizational information.
Effective training should cover recognizing phishing attempts, handling confidential information, password best practices, reporting suspicious activity, and understanding each employee’s role in protecting data. Creating a culture where security is everyone’s responsibility can significantly reduce preventable risks.
You can’t know what you need to protect until you know what you have and where it lives. A Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) is an analysis of how personal information is collected, used, shared, maintained, and disposed of, along with the resulting privacy risks and protections. Pairing it with a comprehensive data inventory enables an organization to better protect that information.
This approach allows you to identify where personally identifiable information is located, who has access to it, how it moves throughout the organization, and whether appropriate safeguards are in place. It can also help you uncover outdated or unnecessary information that should be securely destroyed, encrypted, or relocated to a more secure environment.
Privacy assessments should extend beyond your own systems. Many organizations rely on third-party vendors that also handle sensitive information. Understanding what data those vendors maintain and how they protect it is an important part of managing overall risk. An experienced information governance partner can help conduct PIAs alongside compliance, maturity, and governance assessments to build a stronger long-term strategy.
An entry-level accounting team member shouldn’t automatically have the same access to budgets, forecasts, and executive planning documents as a finance leader. Information access should reflect an individual’s role, business responsibilities, and legitimate need. The principle of least privilege gives employees access only to the systems and information required to perform their work, and nothing more. This reduces the chances of accidental exposure should a system or access to information be compromised.
Access management should begin with a well-defined onboarding process that assigns appropriate permissions from day one. Just as important is regularly reviewing those permissions as employees change roles or leave the organization. Encrypting devices, monitoring access activity, and maintaining an accurate inventory of information assets all help prevent sensitive data from ending up in the wrong hands.
No security program can guarantee that every attack will be stopped. That’s why early detection is just as important as prevention.
The average breach consumes 241 days—181 days to identify it and 60 days to contain it—and costs an average of over $10 million in the U.S. The sooner an organization identifies a potential breach, the sooner it can investigate, contain the threat, and minimize business disruption.
Intrusion prevention systems (IPS) and monitoring tools provide continuous visibility into your environment, alerting security teams when unusual or suspicious activity occurs. Some tools will also carry out automatic and immediate blocking maneuvers like terminating dangerous connections or removing malicious content.
An effective intrusion prevention strategy combines automated monitoring with clear incident response procedures. When alerts trigger action instead of delayed discovery, you’ll be better positioned to protect sensitive information, maintain operations, and reduce the overall impact of security incidents.
Having a comprehensive risk mitigation strategy is essential for any successful information governance program. Penetration testing, employee training, privacy assessments, access controls, and intrusion prevention each play an important role in protecting information throughout its lifecycle. Taking proactive steps today helps reduce risk tomorrow and puts your organization in a stronger position to respond when challenges arise.
Do you want to dive deeper into the relationship between information security and data privacy? Then download our whitepaper, Data Privacy for the Information Professional. It will show you how to develop an organization-wide approach that embeds privacy into the entire information lifecycle, from setting retention schedules to defining limits on data use and gaining meaningful consent.
Download your copy today to learn how to:
Don’t just “check the box” when it comes to legal requirements. Go beyond by building trust and resilience through robust privacy and security practices.
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