BPM Security Requirements: How to Evaluate and Implement

Because processes use and transact massive amounts of data, much of it of a sensitive nature, enterprises must apply a security-first approach to their process management discipline. It is the responsibility of organizations to properly protect the data that is transacted within their environment; it’s a measure of responsibility to their own organization, and to partners and customers. To do so means asking the right questions and performing the necessary due diligence in creating an appropriate framework for data and asset security.

Organizations using BPM to digitally transform their processes are combining both technology and business best practices to support a more responsive, and responsible, way of managing data, people, and decision-making. BPM solutions like the SOC 2 Certified Process Director facilitate these goals through the integration of multiple applications into a platform that allows for collaborative, data-rich solutions.

What is the Right Type of BPM Security

Identifying the right type of security for your organization requires both technology and strategic thinking. One of the key reasons for adopting a BPM approach in the first place is to take advantage of the flexibility and dynamic nature that process management and workflow can deliver; it's an environment that maps to your business needs while effectively leveraging your technology investment.

Process Director has been developed to be an effective enabler of data transactions and communication, both into and out of your enterprise environment. Your business depends upon integration with both internal and third-party applications and the ability to share unique (and usually very sensitive) data with different types of stakeholders. This requires that your data be controlled effectively, but also not totally locked down.

Within all of this must be a security posture that safeguards data and ensures your technology assets and resources cannot be penetrated. Users can certainly apply security controls in their environment, but you have to continuously be aware of the risks and vulnerabilities. Ensuring you have processes in place to alert and remediate allows you to fix issues before they result in your company being the next corporate poster child for data breaches.

How to Ensure BPM Security

As you begin developing your framework for security, consider things like internal policies and requirements, compliance, application development, security training, automation, remediation, and other critical elements that are necessary to having a comprehensive security mindset. The following questions should help you and your team make smarter decisions around how you're going to procure, develop, apply, and manage security while you’re using Process Director:

• Support for alerts and remediation: Do your security policies demand that you alert partners and other stakeholders, as well as trigger remediation processes upon detection of security issues? If so, you should apply an automated, process-driven approach that will integrate security alerts so users can be made aware of issues based on the risk, along with information that identifies where the issues lives. Only with a clear view over your entire IT surface can a user adequately rectify issues.
• Customizing security settings: If you’re using Process Director in the cloud, your cloud security provider (CSP) will likely offer out-of-the-box security settings, but these might not be totally appropriate for your specific needs. Process Director in an on-premises environment will give you some predetermined controls, but these also may need to be customized to your needs. You will want to create guidelines for what levels of security are adequate, and then apply those requirements as controls across Process Director and other assets in your environment.
• Security management: Is security handled by a single team within your organization, or is responsibility handled across your enterprise? It is likely a team with the IT organization, and they should be aware of how broadly Process Director is being used, with specifics about teams and the role within those teams that are using it. Management has to be flexible enough that your security solution can extend to different teams based on their needs, skill levels, and requirements.
• Security Training: Process Director maximizes the contributions of more team members so they can be active participants in how applications are built and decisions get made. With that in mind, it's critical that there is a training roadmap for whatever security approach you choose to use. How will you handle security skills and training? Not every user will have a background in security, but training and education will go far in enabling them to innovate and build while adhering to smart security policies.

The goal of security, no matter what platform or environment you use, is to protect your critical data from attacks and from internal misconfigurations. By customizing your organization’s security framework to fit your architectural and platform needs, you can be better assured that you will be able to maintain continuous awareness and apply risk mitigation best practices.