Operational Artifacts: Managing Governance Blind Spots
So far in this series, we’ve zeroed in on secondary assets - tangible technical units subject to risk management. But what about all the other things floating around your environment? Small apps on an endpoint (remember 7zip?), SharePoint sites, custom dashboards - none of these fit neatly as secondary assets. Yet ignoring them isn’t an option either.
They’re not traditional assets, and managing each like one would would stretch operational resources fast. But they do demand management. Why? Because they carry real operational impact, and someone needs to own that risk.
What does managing these operational artifacts look like? Rather than treat each artifact as unique, we group them into categories - which lets us apply consistent, right-sized expectations:
- Applications (e.g., OS utilities, small tools): keep patched, manage vulnerabilities, track license compliance.
- Document storage (e.g., SharePoint sites, projects in a project management tool): track changes, enforce retention policies, monitor usage.
- Custom dashboards (e.g., BI dashboards, reporting tools): enforce data classification, monitor data accuracy, controls access.
Every operational artifact needs an owner - someone accountable for its lifecycle, security posture, and risk profile. Without ownership, these artifacts become blind spots, silently accumulating risk.
So who defines how we manage them?
- Risk and compliance teams define baseline security requirements for each artifact category, grouping them by threat profile.
- If operational teams come across something that doesn’t fit an existing category, they escalate to risk and compliance to define new requirements - or reuse requirements from categories with similar threat profiles. This keeps governance adaptive without letting it fragment into a million tiny rules.
- Once categories and requirements are set, operational teams take ownership of tailoring and applying controls to each artifact instance. This keeps risk management pragmatic, focused, and scalable.
Managing operational artifacts isn’t about exhaustive control or perfect compliance. It’s about practical oversight: knowing what’s out there, who’s responsible, and where your real risks lie.
We’ve talked about secondary assets and platform-level governance. Operational artifacts are the next frontier. It’s time we bring some order to the mess. How are you currently tracking operational artifacts today - and who owns them?