What is the importance of IT policy documents?

You probably know as a business owner why it is crucial to be insured adequately for your business’s data, computer, and more. OTG, yet, you may have not paid a lot of attention to putting these protections and protocols down in, especially security and IT policies documents.

Having effective security and IT policies in place for any business organization that uses technology as its main backbone is highly recommendable (as most organizations do today). These policies define expected practices and protocols to govern how your systems, network, data, devices and users need to be secured. They also prescribe rules to employees on how to work in the organization securely.

Some of the key areas that should be addressed in your security and IT policies include:

Identity and access management – Mandate policies that govern access control, including passwords, multi-factor authentication, account permissions, and remote access.

To manage operational security effectively, Security policy documents around encryption must be defined, information categorization and labeling need to be specified, protocols for secure file transfer must be outlined, and methods for handling data incidents should also be defined.

Acceptable usage policy - Set appropriate management & usage policies for company owned equipment, applications, tools, e-mail, social media site, etc.

Computer Security – Firewall Specifications for Network– WiFi Networks – VPN connections – Perimeter Security – Intrusion Prevention/ Detection and so on.

Document rules related to password length, complexity, the duration of password use, the need for two factor authentication, and also how to manage passwords.

Establishing how often systems, software, and applications need to be updated for better performance is the responsibility of Patch management.

Business controls - System audit logs, system access logs, system change management monitoring, and security event notifications to retain visibility and for identifying some of the incidents.

Compliance – It means that the organization related to data protection must follow the prescriptions in the laws and statutes of the institutions of each country as well as the code of ethical conduct of all the organizations in the several industries. 

Writing down these security and IT standards, gaining leadership approval on them and informing the staff are beneficial activities to protect your business comprehensively. Policies offer some authors’ practical, clear source for a reference, and are useful in setting up a “security culture” that makes cybersecurity a collective effort.

When getting involved with the emergence of comprehensive policies appears overwhelming, bear in mind that employing the services of a managed IT services provider who offers policy compliance is not an overstatement at all. IT policy documents can provide help in creating legitimate operational policies that are suitable for your organization and its risks. Therefore, creating great policies has to be invested in at this moment to avoid sharper headaches in future.