Before we can improve the operations of an enterprise, we need to understand what it does, and what information it uses and how that information is gathered, stored and used. Following the ISO 17799 standard, we may refer to everything which is important to an institution its 'assets'.

The assets we are concerned with are:

• Processes
• Data
• Systems

In addition, we need to understand who deals with these, and the organization of agents.

This diagram shows the relationships between the assets and the organization:

 

Diagram 1 - Enterprise assets

But what is important is the relationship between the assets, of which the most significant is ownership:

 

Diagram 2 - Asset relationships