Knowing your current state helps you on your way to building  a comprehensive strategy. Then, you ensure that best practices  are followed. To help reach your goals, check out these tips: Security risks, threats, and breaches can come in many forms  and from many places, so companies need to establish a comprehensive approach to security management across IT and the business. As your IT environment moves beyond  the internal data center to include public and private cloud  services, security, governance, and reliability has to be handled in a cohesive manner based on a coordinated plan. ✓ Review backup and disaster-recovery systems in light  of IT security. Apart from anything else, IT security  breaches can require complete application recovery. ✓ Determine specific IT security policies for change management and patch management, and make sure that policies are well understood by your service management staff and by your cloud service provider. ✓ Regularly have external IT security consultants check  your company’s IT security policy, IT network, and the  policies and practices of all your cloud service providers. ✓ Try to create general awareness of security risks by educating and warning staff members about specific  dangers. Complacency is easy, especially if you’re using  a cloud service provider. However, security threats come  from employees as well as outside organizations. ✓ In a highly distributed environment, manage the identity  of who’s allowed to access what resources under what  circumstances. Clearly defined rules combined with automation provide a path forward. Cloud Services For Dummies, IBM Limited Edition  54 Implementing security best practices These materials are the copyright of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. and any  dissemination, distribution, or unauthorized use is strictly prohibited.