Implementing Effective IT Security Policies

IT policies act as a roadmap for navigating the constantly evolving technology landscape. They provide a framework for addressing challenges, ensuring compliance, managing risks, and harnessing the benefits of emerging technologies while maintaining stability and security within an organisation.

A selection of examples of the role IT policies play include -

• Security - IT policies play a crucial role in a technology landscape that is continually evolving with new threats and vulnerabilities emerging regularly. IT policies help establish security protocols and best practices to protect an organisation's data, systems, and infrastructure. They outline the rules for user access, data encryption, password management, and more to mitigate security risks.
• Managing Risk - Technology changes can introduce risks, such as software compatibility issues or data loss during a period of transition. IT policies address risk assessment, mitigation, and contingency planning to minimize the impact of any potential disruptions.
• User Guidelines - IT policies establish guidelines for employees on how to use new applications and tools effectively and responsibly. They will help maintain productivity and the effective use of technology resources.
• Data Management - Data becomes increasingly critical as technology evolves. IT policies define data collection, storage, processing, and sharing. This ensures that data is handled consistently and responsibly, maintaining data integrity and privacy.
• Maintaining Compliance - The laws and regulations governing technology and data use also change over time. IT policies ensure that an organisation stays compliant with relevant laws or industry-specific regulations. Compliance helps avoid legal issues and potential fines.

Click here to download the white paper - Implementing Effective IT Security Policies

Navigation made easier

Designed to help an organisation navigate the technology landscape Policy Management as a Service is a cloud-based subscription solution that comes in 2 versions – Essentials and Premium.

Policy Management as a Service allows an organisation to deliver up to date IT Security Policies in under 5 weeks, eliminating the overhead of creating and maintaining those policies in-house.

All the hard work of gaining expert knowledge, developing, and maintaining policies to keep them current and mapped to standards such as ISO, PCI-DSS and Cyber Essentials Plus is taken care of by our experts on behalf of our customers.

Once in place, the policy management software makes the process of engaging and monitoring stakeholder and user interaction with the content both easy and visible.

Click here to view a version comparison matrix of the Essentials and Premium versions.

New version of Policy Management as a Service released

Our second enhancement release of 2023 went live during late October. There are several new and improved functions in the October release, 2 examples being comprehension testing and an Exceptions Register.

Acceptable Use Policy Quiz

This new feature is designed to test user comprehension of the Acceptable Use Policy (AUP).

Located in the Security Awareness section of the policy management software, the quiz allows you to present users with a selection of questions to validate that they have read and understood your AUP. Users will get an onscreen and email notification of their quiz results.

Premium version sites can opt to require successful completion of the quiz before a user is allowed to progress to the onscreen acceptance of the AUP.

• In the Client Menu, Primary Users are able to
• Create the quiz title
• Select a subset of questions from a predefined library of incorrect statements to use in the quiz
• Edit any of the predefined library of incorrect statements
• Toggle the display of a quiz on or off
• Set a secondary email address for quiz results to be cc’d to (e.g. HR) and tick a box to include the results in the email confirmation, or not
• Choose whether to allow a quiz to be retaken
• View all responses and associated scores
• Run reports to see quiz results
• Export quiz results to CSV

Exceptions Register

The exceptions register function allows a Primary User to:

• Mark any policy statements within PMaaS as exceptions, and include notes
• View the statements that have been marked as exceptions along with the associated notes
• Edit the exception, including updating the status to resolved
• Export the exceptions register as a CSV files.

Click here for full details of the latest release.