The Importance of IT Policies

Organisations provide access to their valuable assets such as vehicles, machinery and building facilities. In doing so it is expected that the management and staff are fully briefed to understand the terms of use, health and safety considerations and in some cases complete operator training.

However, the same level of expectation is often not well detailed for management and staff regarding how they interact with valuable technology and information assets. Typically, the investment afforded to developing and maintaining IT security policies and procedures is minimal which creates a business risk.

The business catalyst for implementing information security policies and procedures should not be an IT related issue or disaster, but a considered and well thought out approach based on business impact analysis, risk assessment and risk mitigation strategies and driven from the top of the organisation down.

Risks Considerations

The risks of not defining acceptable use and management standards for information and information systems include:

• Damage to reputation.
• Financial repercussions due to remediation requirements.
• Loss of business.
• Misuse of data – yours or customers.
• Loss of data – yours or customers.
• System unavailability.
• Legal or regulatory issues

What are the Business Benefits?

As noted above defining and implementing IT security policies helps an organisation to identify and manage business risks.

Having well defined policies and procedures that are communicated to staff and reviewed and updated regularly to keep up with changes in the environment include:

• Providing a security and acceptable use framework for the organisation.
• Helping to protect the information systems and information assets of the organisation.
• Providing a uniform level of control and guidelines for management.
• Delivering one consistent information security message to all.
• Communicating the IT security and acceptable use policies and guidelines to users.
• Providing a benchmark for monitoring and measurement compliance.
• Assisting with staff issues relating to the misuse of the technology or the information.
• Meeting internal obligations of auditors and risk managers.

To download the white paper – The Importance of IT Policies – CLICK HERE

Protocol Policy Systems work with organisations to deliver and maintain comprehensive, easy to understand IT Security Policies. All policies are mapped and cross referenced to relevant international standards.

Our Policy Management as a Service solution is subscription based and therefore gives your organisation the right level of up to date customised policy content, at a fixed and predictable amount per annum.

Click here to view a short demonstration video on our IT Policy Management Software and Service.