Writing your business security policies is often penance for crimes committed in a previous life. Unless you’re one of those sick, twisted individuals who enjoy them, policies are generally perceived as a considerable waste of your time than the MTV awards.
Policy management is one of security’s foremost thankless (yet crucially important) tasks. There’s no glory in writing, maintaining, and communicating policies.
The litmus test of the safety culture of a corporation is who is liable for management policy. The corporate doesn’t take close protection security seriously if it’s the junior security analyst or summer intern.
However, most security policies tend to be released secretly within the middle of the night. These are rarely read or understood by those within the organization. They’re written purely as a compliance check. Policies form the backbone of your security program.
Moreover, it wishes to be treated intrinsically. Here are some ten tips for delivering the maximum value during policy reviews.
Keep track of the policies in a centralized area.
Most companies cope with policy management as they need countless versions of policies floating throughout the organization. It might be best to possess a central repository for all company policies (HR, Legal, IT) because it provides a holistic and unified approach.
Counting on the number of procedures and policies you’ve got, it might be helpful to use a spreadsheet that will outline the owner, the name of your policy, status (draft or live), effective date (last reviewed), and next security review date or time.
Review policies annually when the business needs to change
Having a policy that sits during a file collecting dust is useless. Policies have to be reflective of current business needs and requirements. Given the many industries’ dynamic nature, they must actively maintain their policies.
Communicate policy changes accordingly
Updating the policy without adequately communicating it to the relevant employees is like taking note of the radio with the quantity off. Advertise it on the corporate intranet, speak with department heads, and tell people you see on the device. Could you not send an email and call it every day?
Write the Policy in “Simple English” and Specialize in Conciseness
We aren’t lawyers and not trying to trick our co-workers. Keep the policies clean and straightforward, and avoid heavy jargon. Keep it brief and to the purpose. Can you not use a thesaurus and alter random words to sound smart?
 Check for Grammar and Correct Spelling
Nothing can remove legitimacy faster than a poorly worded policy with spelling mistakes. You only require to be a professional or significant to write down security policies, except for the sake of professionalism. You continue to abide by the principles of the English language.
Revision of the Policy and Version Information Table
You must keep track of every version number for every policy and guideline.
Ask: The policy reflects the way the corporation currently conducts business?
These policies cannot exist in seclusion from the business. For instance, you can’t ban the utilization of Drop Box in your organization without providing your employees with an inexpensive alternative, especially if your business requires tools like DropBox. They’ll go around the policy if you need a monitoring or enforcement mechanism.
Policy adequately affects the problems it’s intended to address
If you created a policy to deal with potential data loss via mobile devices but did not include that the device should be locked with a password/PIN, the policy needs to address the info loss issue fully. An incomplete policy is an ineffective policy.
Policies have to be created to deal with new business requirements.
As new business requirements are inherent, take your time with a subsequent policy review. Security policies, especially administrative controls, indeed have risks.
For instance, when USB sticks became widely adopted, many organizations waited years before updating their policies to reflect how USB sticks should be used within their enterprise.
Not creating a USB policy and guideline to scale back this risk, many organizations exposed themselves to a better likelihood of knowledge loss.
Do any policies have to be removed because the business requirements are no longer applicable?
Does your company still have policies surrounding the utilization of floppy diskettes or laser discs? Did your company change its business direction?
Keeping old, non-applicable guidelines is like going from the beach to figure and becoming your business attire but forgetting to get rid of your flip-flops.
Policies are foundational building blocks. Developing solid policies that are adhered to, available, and understood throughout the organization extends to constructing a solid security program. It is assumed that you’ll need to find others thanks to serving your penance.
