While you may have people within the business that know how to craft the perfect business blog or marketing materials, there’s quite a fine art to drafting an IT security policy. When it comes to putting this in place, it shouldn’t just provide specific instructions, it needs to provide a framework that will ensure the survival of the business. And when there are so many threats that can derail a business, it’s important that at the very beginning of your business you craft an adequate policy. How should you draft this plan?
Understanding The Organization
Do you know the direction your organization is going in? The myriad of policies and procedures, not to mention rules and regulations, means that there are so many different moving parts you’ve got to give consideration to. When you are implementing an appropriate IT policy, you could make the most of managed IT services and have someone come in to do this. But, it is important that if you go down this avenue that you ensure they are kept within the loop. This can be quite difficult when they are external to the organization. But what you have to remember is in the pre-planning stage, you’ve got to have people on board that are integral and well invested with the business, so it could be someone internal that can do this.
Accounting For Threat
When you identify each potential threat to the infrastructure, you need to then think about potential safeguards, as well as the cost involved. When it comes to minimizing risk, it’s about preparing as much as possible about the threats. From there you can identify problem-solving abilities and put in place additional safeguards. When it comes to cost, it can be a difficult thing to determine, but if you look at what could be lost if a threat was to infiltrate the business, this gives you a better idea of how much you need to invest in the first place.
Allowing For Updates
When you implement the policy, it’s important not to leave it to gather dust in the corner. What you also need to think about is that if the policy is too rigid. You need to explain why the policy is in existence. Because the policy needs to provide a specific set of rules but is also malleable in terms of updating, and also needs to be readable and enforceable, there are a lot of things to be considered at this point. Being too specific can threaten to undermine the entire process, and this is why you need to think about the wording incredibly carefully.
Ultimately, these policies are legal documents, and it’s not just about involving the legal teams, but it’s about explaining the policies to your employees. These are legally binding documents, and they don’t just serve to protect the business, but they serve to enforce rule in the right way but is also legally binding. There’s a lot to take on board, but the best IT security policies will comprise of all of these salient points.