The proper management of security starts way before and goes way beyond technical decisions. Technical decisions are extremely important for proper information security management, but they are neither the starting point nor the most important decisions related to effective information security management.

Yet most organizations treat information security as a purely technical issue. This, in my opinion, is why we keep seeing major incidents at large and familiar organizations (e.g., TJX). Not until high-level management understands that security is primarily a business issue and begins to assert its proper role in the security process will the state of affairs in information security begin to change. Only when this happens will it be possible to ensure the appropriate execution of the other roles. The objective of this article is to support this assertion and to describe the security business process needed to make meaningful improvements in the management of information security in the entire industry.