The prominent and deeply experienced Russ Stalters has been around the business end of information for some time and has certainly seen a thing or two. But when I review his linkedin profile, the thing that always stands out for me is his senior role in the management of information during the response and restoration efforts for the Deepwater Horizon Gulf Oil Spill. Now that’s serious hands-on experience at the sharp end of information and information risk.

Deepwater-Horizon-oil-spill-business-ethics-perspectiveSo when I got to meet with Russ, it was no surprise that we found we had plenty in common, especially around what organizations need to do to get a handle on their information risk profile. Particularly, we shared views on the building and evaluating risk maps for unstructured data. In a previous post I described a hierarchy of information management needs, which is founded upon understanding – and at today’s scales, that should involve a bottom-up fact-based audit to complement top-down qualitative analyses. Cutting to the chase, what that led to was a joint collaboration to produce a white paper “Not If, But When You Get Hacked” which I’m pleased to be able to present today. You can grab a copy from our resources or head over to Russ’ own blog ‘Getting Information Done’ to take a look at his side of the story.

In the paper you’ll find a clear description of things that build up the risk picture in corporate content and you can hear what Russ has to say about getting a handle on those risks and considerations for building your own risk map.

I hope you find it useful.