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KSI-PIY-RISReviewing Investments in Security

LOW
MODERATE

Formerly KSI-PIY-06

>Control Description

Persistently review the effectiveness of the organization's investments in achieving security objectives.
Defined terms:
Persistently

>NIST 800-53 Controls

>Trust Center Components
3

Ways to express your implementation of this indicator — approaches vary by organization size, complexity, and data sensitivity.

From the field: Mature implementations express privacy risk management through automated data discovery — data inventory tools scanning actual data stores, flow maps generated from service mesh and API gateway data, and privacy risk registers tracking identified risks with treatment status. Data discovery tools verify inventory completeness against actual data stores automatically.

Data Inventory and Mapping

Architecture & Diagrams

Data inventory expressing what personal data is collected, where it flows, and how it is protected — derived from automated discovery

Automated: Data discovery tools verify inventory completeness against actual data stores

Privacy Risk Management Framework

Documents & Reports

Framework expressing how privacy risks are identified, assessed, and mitigated

Privacy by Design Documentation

Processes & Procedures

How privacy is embedded into the development lifecycle

>Programmatic Queries

Beta
GRC

CLI Commands

Count security issues by status
jira issue list --project SECURITY --plain --columns status | sort | uniq -c | sort -rn

>20x Assessment Focus Areas

Aligned with FedRAMP 20x Phase Two assessment methodology

Completeness & Coverage:

  • Does your investment effectiveness review cover all security spending categories — tools, staffing, training, compliance, managed services, and consulting?
  • How do you ensure effectiveness reviews assess both operational security outcomes (fewer incidents, faster detection) and compliance outcomes (FedRAMP findings remediated)?
  • Are there security investments that are not subject to effectiveness review, and how do you ensure those do not persist without accountability?
  • How do you ensure investment reviews consider total cost of ownership, not just acquisition cost — including maintenance, staffing, and integration costs?

Automation & Validation:

  • What automated metrics track whether security investments are achieving their intended objectives (reduced risk scores, faster MTTD/MTTR, fewer findings)?
  • How do you validate that a tool or investment is actively contributing to security outcomes rather than being shelfware?
  • What happens when an effectiveness review determines an investment is underperforming — is there an automated flag or threshold that triggers re-evaluation?
  • How do you measure the counterfactual — how would your security posture have been different without a specific investment?

Inventory & Integration:

  • What tool or platform tracks security investments, their costs, and their mapped objectives?
  • How do investment effectiveness metrics integrate with your GRC platform and executive reporting dashboards?
  • How do you correlate security tool utilization data with investment decisions to identify underutilized tools?
  • Are security investment objectives mapped to specific KSIs or NIST 800-53 controls to demonstrate compliance value?

Continuous Evidence & Schedules:

  • How frequently are security investments reviewed for effectiveness, and what evidence demonstrates each review was completed?
  • Is investment effectiveness data (metrics, utilization, outcomes) available in structured format for assessor review?
  • What evidence shows that effectiveness reviews have led to changes — tools replaced, budgets reallocated, or approaches adjusted?
  • How do you demonstrate that security investment effectiveness is improving over time rather than remaining static?

Update History

2026-02-04Removed italics and changed the ID as part of new standardization in v0.9.0-beta; no material changes.

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