The Foundation of Digital Governance: Regulations, Standards, and Frameworks

Effective IT policies are critical to ensure security, operational efficiency and compliance in the digital world. Building robust policies relies on a powerful, interconnected system comprised of regulations, IT standards, and IT frameworks. These foundational tools provide a structured and consistent approach to managing IT resources, risks, and compliance within an organisation. They help to guide organisations to align their IT strategies with business goals, legal requirements, and established industry best practices.

Download the whitepaper:

The Benefits Of A Standards Based Approach To Implementing IT Policies

How Regulations, Standards & Frameworks Work Together?

Let’s take a look at how IT regulations, standards, and frameworks shape effective IT policies.

IT Regulations: Protecting Data & Ensuring Compliance

At a high level, data protection refers to the legal and ethical management of personal data - how it is collected, processed, stored, shared, and ultimately deleted. Data protection requirements are primarily shaped by the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), the Data Protection Act 2018, and related legislation. The focus is on ensuring individuals' rights are respected, including their right to access, rectify, restrict, and erase their personal data.

In the IT domain, these mandatory rules have been applied to areas such as data protection, privacy, and security. An example of an IT-related regulation is the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK – GDPR) which governs personal data protection within the U.K.

Standards: Ensuring Consistency & Measurable Security

Standards represent the next essential layer, providing the specific requirements for consistency and measurement. These are formalised specifications created by recognised national or international bodies, such as the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Standards are generally more rigid than frameworks and serve as rigorous benchmarks used for certification and compliance verification. They provide the detailed requirements or guidelines that specify how an organisation can meet its legal or industry expectations in a consistent and measurable manner.

A primary example is ISO/IEC 27001, which offers a systematic approach to establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continuously improving an Information Security Management System (ISMS). ISO/IEC 27001 is a formal standard providing specific requirements for protecting information assets, and organisations can be formally certified against it by an external body. While standards are not usually legally mandatory, but mandatory for standard compliance, they frequently form the essential foundation for demonstrating that an organisation is, in fact, compliant with the standard. Policies based on these standards help ensure comprehensive compliance with regulatory and contractual obligations.

Frameworks: Practical Roadmaps for IT Policy Implementation

IT Frameworks provide the practical roadmap for implementation. Frameworks are structured sets of guidelines, processes, and best practices designed to help organisations put their policies and controls into action, ensuring they align with existing standards and regulations.

Unlike the rigidity of standards, frameworks offer flexible guidance. This flexibility allows organisations to shape their IT policies according to their specific needs, size, industry, and risk tolerance, rather than strictly prescribing exact actions. Frameworks assist in ensuring policies address crucial areas such as risk management, security, operational efficiency, and service quality.

Examples include the Cyber Assessment Framework (CAF), of which a version is now being adopted across the local government sector. The CAF, designed by the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), is a tool to help organisations assess and improve their cyber security and resilience, manage cyber risks and protect essential services from cyber threats. The CAF is primarily designed for organisations operating essential services, in sectors such as energy, healthcare, transport, digital infrastructure and government.

COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies), which focuses on the governance and management of enterprise IT, and ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library), which emphasises service management and delivery.

IT Policy Challenges: Maintaining Relevant & Effective Policies

Whilst it is great to have tools (regulations, standards and frameworks) available, the fact is that to develop, deliver and maintain IT policies requires resources that many organisations don’t readily have available. As a result, the policy content many organisations have in circulation is often not fit for purpose, out of date and doesn’t reflect current business requirements.

Points to consider when assessing your policy requirements:

• What regulations, standards, and frameworks are relevant to our situation and how do we apply them when drafting policies?
• How do we determine which policies will address all our business requirements?
• Do we have someone in the team who can draft content that is easy for our users to read and understand?
• Will the person drafting content know how to align the policies with practical best practice?
• Who will review and edit policies when our business requirements and technology usage changes or the standards change?
• Is there a cost-effective way to deliver our requirements without tying up our busy or limited resources?

Contact us to discuss how Policy Management as a Service addresses the challenges of trying to develop, deliver and maintain robust IT policies.