Have you ever asked yourself,
Would your organization be able to function without its policies?
By implementing the appropriate policies and procedures, an operational framework is created which ensures compliance with all applicable laws and regulations. In addition to bringing your organization’s values to life, your policies ensure that everyone understands your standards of acceptable conduct and performance.
Although policies themselves do not solve problems and can in fact complicate matters unless they are clearly written and observed, they define the ideal towards which all organizational efforts should be directed. As defined by the definition of security policy, it consists of clear, comprehensive, and well-defined guidelines, rules, and procedures governing access to an organization’s systems and the information contained within them.
To ensure compliance with your policies, you will need to conduct additional training and testing, as well as establish progressive discipline standards.
This is where policy management comes into play – the act of developing, maintaining, and communicating your policies.
The importance of policy management:
The risks of not managing your policies effectively should provide sufficient incentive to prioritize policy management. Data and Security breaches can result in regulatory fines, reputational damage resulting from publicity surrounding legislative violations, and lawsuits may result.
It is not sufficient to write a policy handbook and to communicate policies and procedures only once. Good policy management requires the buy-in and understanding of your policies (perhaps by having your people on the ground contribute to them). In order to ensure that the teams responsible for implementing the policies fully understand what is required of them, training and testing may be necessary.
How are security policies implemented?
In order to ensure that an organization is secure, written security policies are essential, and everyone in the organization must understand the significance of their role in maintaining security. It is possible to accomplish this by establishing a “Security Culture”. The key elements of creating a healthy security culture are creating reasonable security policies to protect the organization, as well as providing interactive security awareness training in support of those policies.
Generally, security policies are detailed documents that all employees should read, accept, and sign in order for their employment to continue. Employee personnel files should always include a copy of the signed security policy. To ensure that a security policy is adequate and effective, it must always be accompanied by adequate security awareness training.
During security training sessions, the company’s security policy should be fully explained and there should be plenty of time for questions and discussion. In order to achieve a secure workplace, staff members must understand the “How and Why” behind security policies, that these policies are essential for their job functions and to the sustainability of the organization, and that they must be taken seriously.
With Kamanja’s on-boarding and off-boarding process, you can create and maintain the policies templates that we provide you. This is while ensuring that all policies have been approved by the appropriate individuals in your company.
