Cyber Security Policies


January 15, 2022, Learn eTutorial
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What is a security policy?

Security policies are defined as a set of high level rules that an organization issues by the high officials and security experts for all the employees of that organization who have access to the organization's sensitive information. It has the rules defining the way of accessing the information.

These rules are the non-changeable document in the organization which is responsible for all the information security from all the inside and outside threats. Security rules are a never ending document, which will be updated all the time where new technology and threats arrive.

For example, almost all the organizations have specific rules for accessing the documents and using the external devices in the company systems. In addition, most of the organization has written documents that employees are not allowed to take websites that are not secure.

What is the need for cyber security policies?

There are attackers everywhere that may be from inside or outside. For the smooth functioning and security of an organization, it must have some policies in handling the information. Some of the other needs for perfect security policies are

  1. Increases efficiency: This can be quite helpful to avoid accidental and intentional damages while accessing the information of the organization. It can reduce the cost of many security systems if the employees know what they are allowed to use and not allowed to do inside the organization.
  2. Increases discipline and Accountability: This will help the organization to increase its discipline as the organization has clear written rules for employees what they are allowed to do and don’t. It helps to reduce the mistakes and make all employees more disciplined as the company is able to take action if an employee makes any mistake.
  3. Helps to make more business: An organization which has very good security policies will increase the trust factor of that organization which will make the clients more confident to make business deals with those organizations that keep its information secure.
  4. Increases employees knowledge: In an organization, it is not a mandatory requirement that all employees know about cyber security. If the organization has well written policies about cyber security, it will be helpful for the employees to know about it and helps to make strong credentials.

What are the cyber security types?

Every organization has its own criterias to make the security policies and discussing all of them is beyond our scope. Some of the important security types are

  1. Organizational security policy: Organizational security policies is the overall security measures that the employees should follow inside the organization. This will be the basic security policy of that organization, from which other specific security policies are derived.
  2. System Specific Policies: Inside the organization there will be different systems like customer applications, payroll systems, etc. system specific policies is the security rules for specific systems.
  3. Issue Specific Policy: Issue specific policies are the rules which we have to follow when are specific issue is created inside an organization

What are the different security recommendations?

Some of the important cyber security recommendations are here,

Virus and Spyware protection

Virus and spyware are very important threats for an organization which is able to steal all the information and even can destroy systems in that organization. Virus and spyware policy provides the following protection,

  1. It helps to detect and remove all the viruses and helps to repair the system damage caused by the virus impact.
  2. It helps to detect the threats in files and applications that are malicious or suspicious.

Firewall Policy

Firewall is a gateway that helps to detect and block all the external threats from the cyber attackers. Firewall policy includes the following protection

  1. It blocks all the unauthorized access and malicious packets coming from the internet.
  2. Firewall can able to detect all the attacks from external criminals

Intrusion Prevention

Intrusion is the illegal access of the organization information and tries to corrupt or steal the information from the organization. Intrusion prevention helps to stop all the attacks which are coming from outside or from inside of an organization.

It detects and stops all the attackers and protects applications from malwares and vulnerabilities.

Application and Device control

This policy includes the protection of physical devices such as organizations computers and other devices and also deals with the protection of applications that run on the devices.

Exceptions Policy

Some organizations have some applications which are not included under this security scans such applications and data are included in exceptions policy. These applications or data don't come under security.

Host Integrity Policy

Every organization has clients who have access to the organization's data and applications. In such a scenario, this host integrity policy helps the organizations to enforce or define some policies that the client computer must have to access the resources of the organization. For example, a client must have an antivirus installed.

Which all issues are addressed in the cyber security policies?

Organizations' need for security policies will be different for each organization but there are some important issues that must be addressed by almost all organizations while making the policies of cyber security.

  1. Physical security: These policies include the physical securities that organizations must provide to their physical devices and networks like datacenter, servers, systems, etc. it includes the access control, monitoring etc.
  2. Data Retention: Organizations need a huge amount of data for the proper working. Data retention includes policies regarding how much data collects, where to store the data, how long it should be stored etc.
  3. Data Encryption: Data encryption includes encryption methods that are going to be used to store and transmit the data.
  4. Access control: It defines who all have the rights to access the data. In addition, it defines how long access should be given for a specific user on a specific resource.
  5. Risk Management: Risk management policies include the risk assessment, and the organization strategy on a risk situation. In addition, who is in charge of such a situation?