What is an information security policy?
Security threats are constantly evolving and compliance requirements are becoming increasingly complex. Organizations need to create a comprehensive information security policy to cover both challenges. An information security policy makes it possible to coordinate and enforce a security program and communicate security measures to third parties and external auditors.
To be effective, an information security policy should:
- Cover end-to-end security processes within the organization.
- Be enforceable and practical.
- Be regularly updated in response to evolving business needs and threats.
- Be focused on your organization’s business objectives.
Information security policies can have the following benefits for an organization:
Facilitate data integrity, availability, and confidentiality – Effective information security policies standardize rules and processes that protect against vectors that threaten data integrity, availability, and confidentiality.
Protect sensitive data – Information security policies prioritize the protection of intellectual property and sensitive data, such as personally identifiable information.
Minimizes the risk of security incidents – An information security policy helps organizations define procedures for identifying and mitigating vulnerabilities and risks. It also details rapid responses to minimize damage during a security incident.
Executes organization-wide security programs – Information security policies provide the framework for operationalizing procedures.
Provides a clear security statement to partners – Information security policies summarize the organization’s security posture and explain how the organization protects IT resources and assets. They facilitate rapid response to information requests from third parties, customers, partners and auditors.
Helps comply with regulatory requirements – Creating an information security policy can help organizations identify security gaps related to regulatory requirements and address them. A security policy can be as broad as you want it to be, from everything from IT security to the security of related physical assets, but applicable across the board. The following list provides some important considerations when developing an information security policy.
- Purpose
First specify the purpose of the policy, which can be:
- To create an overall approach to information security, particularly in terms of standards, security requirements, and best practices adopted by the organization.
- To detect and prevent information security breaches, such as misuse of networks, data, applications and information systems.
- Maintain the organization’s reputation and uphold applicable ethical, legal and governance responsibilities.
- Respect the rights of employees and customers, including how to respond to inquiries and complaints about non-compliance.
- Public
Define the audience to which the information security policy applies. You can also specify which segments of the public are not within the scope of the policy (for example, personnel in another business unit who separately manage security may not be within the scope of the policy).
- Information Security Objectives
Guide your management team to agree well-defined objectives for strategy and security. Information security focuses on three main objectives:
- Confidentiality – Only authenticated and authorized individuals can access data and information assets.
- Integrity – Data must be intact, accurate and complete and IT systems must be kept operational.
- Availability – Users should be able to access information or systems when needed.
- Authority and access control policy
Hierarchical model – A senior manager may have the authority to decide what data can be shared and with whom. The policy may have different terms for a senior manager than for a junior employee or contractor. The policy should outline the level of authority over data and IT systems for each organizational role.
Network Security Policy – Critical patches and other threat mitigation policies are approved and enforced. Users can access company networks and servers only through unique logins that require authentication, including passwords, biometrics, ID cards or tokens. You should monitor all systems and log all login attempts.
- Data classification
The policy should classify data into categories, which may include ‘top secret’, ‘secret’, ‘confidential’ and ‘public’. The objectives of data classification are:
- To understand which systems and which operations and applications touch the most sensitive and controlled data, in order to properly design security controls for that hardware and software (see 6.)
- To ensure that sensitive data cannot be accessed by individuals with lower authorization levels.
- To protect extremely important data and avoid unnecessary security measures for unimportant data.
- Data support and operations
- Data protection regulations – systems that store personal or other sensitive data – must be protected according to organizational standards, best practices, industry compliance standards and relevant regulations. Most security standards require, at a minimum, encryption, a firewall and anti-malware protection.
- Data Backup – Encrypt your data backup according to industry best practices, both on the move and at rest. Securely store backup media or move backup to secure cloud storage.
- Data movement – Transfer data only through secure protocols. Encrypt any data copied to portable devices or transmitted over a public network.
- Security awareness and behavior
Share IT security policies with your staff Conduct training sessions to inform employees of your security procedures and mechanisms, including data protection measures, access safeguards and classification of sensitive data.
Social engineering – Place special emphasis on the dangers of social engineering attacks (such as phishing emails or solicitation of information via phone calls). Make all employees responsible for observing, preventing and reporting such attacks.
Clean desk policy – Secure laptops with a cable lock. Shred sensitive documents that are no longer needed. Keep printer areas clean so documents don’t fall into the wrong hands.
Work with HR to define how the internet should be restricted both in the workplace and for remote employees using organizational assets. Allow use of YouTube, social networks, etc.? Block unwanted websites using a proxy.
- Encryption policy
Encryption involves scrambling data to keep it inaccessible or hidden from unauthorized parties. It helps protect data stored at rest and in transit between locations and ensures that sensitive, private and proprietary data remains private. It can also improve the security of client-server communication. An encryption policy helps organizations define:
- The devices and environments the organization must encrypt.
- When encryption is mandatory.
- The minimum standards applicable to the chosen encryption software.
- Data backup policy
A data backup policy defines the rules and procedures for backing up data. It is an integral component of overall data protection, business continuity and disaster recovery strategy. Here are the key functions of a data backup policy:
- Identifies all the information the organization needs to back up.
- Determines the frequency of backups, for example, when to perform an initial full backup and when to run incremental backups.
- Defines a storage location that contains backup data.
- Lists all roles responsible for backup processes, for example, a backup administrator and IT team members.
- Staff responsibilities, rights and duties
Appoint staff to carry out user access reviews, education, change management, incident management, implementation and regular security policy updates. Responsibilities should be clearly defined as part of the security policy.
- Benchmarks for system hardening
The information security policy should reference security benchmarks that the organization will use to harden critical systems, such as the Center for Information Security (CIS) benchmarks for Linux, Windows Server, AWS, and Kubernetes.
- References to regulations and compliance standards
The information security policy should reference regulations and compliance standards that impact the organization, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), etc.