A practical playbook for securing mission-critical information

Every organisation depends on a small set of information assets it cannot afford to lose. Identifying these “crown jewels” and protecting them with disciplined governance, clear ownership and targeted controls is the foundation of modern resilience, writes Steve Durbin, Chief Executive of the Information Security Forum (ISF)

Organisations spend billions on cyber tools, yet most breaches that matter occur because teams have not agreed what they are actually defending. “Crown jewels” is not marketing jargon; it is a disciplined way to identify the handful of information assets whose loss would materially damage the business. If you treat everything as critical, then nothing is. If you can name and own the few assets that drive revenue, reputation, regulatory compliance, or core operations, you can focus on resources where they change outcomes.

I like to define a company’s “crown jewels” as mission-critical information assets—data, processes, and the systems that enable them—where confidentiality, integrity, or availability failures would cause severe financial loss, regulatory sanction, or existential reputational harm. The definition must come from the business, not the security team. Ask executives: which assets could stop us operating for days, sink customer trust, or trigger fines in the tens of millions? Their answers should drive classification.

Start with discovery and impact-based classification

You cannot protect what you have not identified. Perform targeted discovery to map data flows and dependencies for core processes: customer transactions, billing, manufacturing controls, intellectual property, or high-risk personal data. Classify assets by business impact—financial, operational, reputational, and regulatory—and isolate the small set that is truly mission-critical.

This is not a one-off exercise. Crown jewels evolve as products change, acquisitions complete, or regulatory regimes shift; schedule reassessments at major business milestones.

Assign clear ownership and decision rights

Every crown jewel needs a named business owner and a technical steward. The business owner decides acceptable downtime, recovery priorities, and risk appetite. The technical steward translates those business decisions into architecture, controls, and recovery playbooks.

Without clear accountabilities, protection becomes an afterthought and response decisions disperse across teams during crises.

Make governance proportional and pragmatic

Governance is not a paperwork exercise but the mechanism that enforces investment prioritisation. A governance forum that includes senior stakeholders from the business, security, IT, and legal must sign off on what counts as a crown jewel. Budgets and roadmaps should be driven by that forum.

When compromises are necessary, they should be explicit and traceable to a risk decision, not implicit defaults that expose the business.

Apply controls that reduce business impact

Prioritise segmentation, least privilege, strong authentication, and encryption where they reduce actual exposure. Network segmentation and micro-segmentation limit the blast radius. Multi-factor authentication and certificate hygiene protect identity.

Anomaly detection around crown-jewel environments provides early warning; logging without context is noise. Above all, design for recoverability: air-gapped or immutable backups, tested restoration procedures, and recovery runbooks that assume the worst.

Culture is the multiplier

Technical controls fail when people do not understand their role in protecting the business. Translate the value of crown jewels into everyday behaviours. Ask who must approve data exports. Which processes require privileged checks?

Make secure habits measurable by including relevant KPIs in operational reviews, tabletop exercises, and leader performance objectives. Training should be concise, role-specific, and tied to scenarios that matter to the business.

Test relentlessly

Recovery plans are only a hypothesis until they are validated. Regular, scenario-based exercises, from tabletop through full failover, reduce guesswork and reveal hidden dependencies.

Test incident escalation paths with business owners in the loop so they practice decision-making under pressure.

Be economical and transparent with investments

Not every dataset requires the same level of protection. As Greg Neville from Towerwall said, “Don’t lock up peanut butter in Fort Knox.” Leaders must decide what is worth the investment and what can tolerate residual risk.

That decision should be traceable: documented risk acceptance, costed mitigation options, and a plan to revisit the choice. This discipline prevents unfocused security spending and ensures scarce resources protect what matters.

Measure what matters

Move beyond compliance checkboxes to metrics that reflect business resilience: mean time to detect and recover for crown-jewel assets, successful restoration rate in tests, and the proportion of crown-jewel systems covered by the protection baseline.

Report those metrics to the board in business terms: potential downtime cost, customer impact, and regulatory exposure.

Final note on change and vigilance

The crown jewels in 2025 will not be the same in 2027. Cloud migrations, AI models, data monetisation strategies, and regulatory attention reshape risk factors quickly. Treat classification and protection as continuous programmes, not projects with a finish line.

Protecting the crown jewels is a leadership problem more than a technology problem. Security teams provide expertise and controls; business leaders decide priorities, accept or transfer risk, and enforce discipline. When the business clearly defines what it cannot afford to lose and aligns governance, controls, culture, and testing around that definition, enterprise resilience is sure to follow. Start small, be rigorous, and keep the business at the centre of every security decision.

Key takeaways

1. Get senior leadership buy-in. Executives are best placed to identify critical processes.
2. Consider the full range of potential threats. It’s not just the hackers you need to worry about.
3. Take all relevant measures to control and mitigate threats. Think about people and process, not just technology.
   
   

Steve Durbin is Chief Executive of the Information Security Forum (ISF), an independent association that addresses major challenges in information security and risk management for organisations across the Fortune 500 and Forbes 2000. He is a frequent speaker on the Board’s role in cybersecurity and technology.

Further information
To find out more, visit securityforum.org

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