Importance Of Security Policy

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Security policy is an important living document that discusses all kind of possible threats that can occur in the organization. The threats that occur, the best solution and the team that has to take care of a particular threat are explained in this document. The security policy also describes the limits of an employee within the organization. If security policy is designed in a effective manner, it finds solution to all possible threats. The points like security policy definition, requirements to design it and its benefits are clearly described in this paper.

Importance of Security Policy

Security Policy is a written statement or set of writings which includes policies, rules, and boundaries of company, security measures on how an organization protects itself from all kind of possible threats. It is a set of instructions, rules that are to be obeyed by everyone in the organization. The company requirements in different things, targets, goals, security aspect etc. changes with time. Along with those changes, the Security Policy should change with time. Hence it is a never ending document for which it is called a Living Document. Everyone has their own way in preparing Security Policy (Chantzos, 2010).

There are many considerations and points to be taken note, to prepare Security policy and update it regularly. By preparing a strong security policy and implementing it, any organization or a company can protect its resources. But at the same time, if the restrictions are over made, employees may get over burdened. So the policy such that it meets all the required security measures that are understandable to the entire employee body and easy to implement.

The main aim of this Living document is to provide better security to all the constraints of the organization or company. So to make it a better tool, there are many functions to be followed in preparing it (Shimonski, 2003).

Easy to Understand

The policy should be easy to understand to the entire employee body of the company and should be easy to implement so that, conflicts in understanding cannot meet the requirement.

Flexibility

As said before this is a living document which is to be changed accordingly basing on the present scenario of the company. So it should be flexible to change or convert such that, it matches the requirements that provide better security to the company.

Reviewable

The company’s security issues changes depending on many factors. The security procedures and policies may not meet the requirement at all. In that case, it may be necessary to change the entire policy and prepare a new policy. Hence, the document must be good to review.

Follow Up

A perfect designing of security policy itself is not enough for a secured procedure. All the direct and indirect staff of the company must be familiar of the contents of the security policy. To make sure that, all the employees are familiar with the document; they are supposed to read the entire document and made to sign in a agreement, so that they won’t violate the rules.

Importance of Security Policy

Security policy is the detailed structure or design of the company to have a formatted procedure, rules that provides security to it. There are many a reasons to implement Security policy in an organization (Walt, 2001). They are as follows:

Defined Security threats

Any organization can be affected with different kind of threats and security issues depending on the type of functionalities being carried out in it. Sometimes there may be malfunctions in the business workout, and can bring loss or damage to the organization. All these threats are explained in a step by step procedure. The way to detect them and the responsible team that should work on that particular issue are also explained in the document. Many of the points are assumed that they may occur in the future, designed based on the previous experiences and the knowledge of similar businesses around the world.

Solutions to the formulated threats

For every possible threat defined in the threats column, very formal and simple solution is also defined in the security policy. For every threat the solution is explained in a set of points or methods. Whenever a threat occurs the related staff has to follow the set of rules to overcome the threat consequences. Some threats may be unexpected that is not present in the security policy. For such cases, the management finds an alternative and immediately adds the threat and the determined solution in the security policy.

Combines all security measures under one tree

For a business organization, there are many branches, fields, sectors, groups etc., dealing with many aspects and things. There are lot of problems associated in each type and can affect the business overall. Hence, all these threats are brought under one tree and the document. This facilitates the employee body to learn about all kind of threats that may occur in their field and other fields of the body. Hence, when a threat occurs, the effective team works on it and the other employee body can help can get rid of that problem.

Facilitates security measures

Along with the occurrence of the threats, the priorities are also important to result in less loss when multiple threats occur in an organization. If a company has to face multiple threats, and a single employee body has to deal with it, then there is a need to decide, which comes first. So the Security policy decides the priorities and instructions to deal with multiple threats. It also describes the damage that may cause for a particular threat and the amount of time should be taken to resolve the problem.

Knowledge about Limits

Any organization has employees from different streams and may be un experienced who have the authority to deal with the sensitive parts of the organization. Hence, knowingly or unknowingly, they may mess up something. If a person using company computer opens unauthorized sites, it may cause damage to the company’s systems. Hence, they have certain limits to access system within the company boundaries.

Conclusion

Security policy is an important aspect in every organization. The biggest problem associated in any organization is the security issues. Hence there should be something that can protect the system. Security policy is used to overcome any kind of problems associated with in the organization. All kind of threats are discussed in detail and the perfect solutions are proposed. The team that has to work on a particular threat is also mentioned in it. Hence, having security policy facilitates an organization to protect itself.