NIST is perhaps one of the smartest decisions a business can make in promoting and protecting their integrity. The voluntary framework is a ransomware risk management program with five key functions: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond and Recover. It is a great approach to securing confidential and sensitive information. Since it is recognized as one of the best practices, businesses can rely on the trustworthiness of NIS. Since it is organization specific, businesses can create a plan best fit for their values and concerns, while being guided on how to reduce cybersecurity risks, and properly manage them if or when they do occur. This process is basically an ongoing training course dedicated to helping protect businesses who want to protect their stakeholders and consumers.
This framework is not exclusive to only the cybersecurity field, which resonates with me greatly. As a psychology major, patient confidentiality is undeniably one of the most important aspects of a counselor’s job. With the wave of electronic documents, keeping a patient’s information, address, social security number, medications, and more online is both convenient, but extremely dangerous. A NIST framework however, could greatly benefit a counseling center in protecting the very standards it is built upon, and further strengthening the company’s credibility. It is most certainly something I expect to have at any location my future profession may be in, and something I would look for in choosing a place of work.