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Data security policies provide organizations with an essential way of formalizing the security controls they've put in place to defend data against cyber attacks and ensure business operations continue uninterrupted.
They help organizations document, standardize and formalize what security controls and policies they have put into effect to reduce the chances of a data breach while keeping business running effectively in case there's one.
Before security controls and policies can be developed, a data security strategy must first be employed to classify and inventory sensitive information.
Once contextualized, procedures and controls that mitigate any risk the data poses to an operation can then be developed accordingly.
Data can be found in many places and formats, including:
- File-sharing and local databases.
- Cloud Applications
- File-shares
- Databases
- Mail servers
- Mobile devices
- Websites
- Third-party applications.
What is an IT Security Policy Comprehensive?
Each type presents its own set of challenges when trying to establish relative risk levels for data. What Constitutes an IT Security Policy? An adequate IT security policy must include measures designed to prevent data breaches, detect threats to IT, analyze suspicious behavior patterns, and offer remediation if something should go amiss.
IT policies play a pivotal role.
An IT Security Policy will serve to safeguard your company against security risks.
Think of it as being the link between people, technology, and processes - when insecurity occurs, it likely occurs due to one failing somewhere along this chain of command.
An effective IT security policy should inform employees exactly what to expect while simultaneously instilling safe practices into them.
Such an agreement can cover anything from how your workstations will be set up to login procedures for staff and building access procedures that should be known about, training procedures for employees as well as building access procedures - with many security breaches prevented simply through education about safe practices among end users.
What Is A Data Security Policy
A data security policy describes an organization's goals when it comes to protecting data. They outline which specific controls they plan to put into effect; such measures might include administrative, technical, or physical protection measures depending on their business model, while any particular threats which must be dealt with may also be included within such plans.
Technical controls might include using network security appliances to monitor for suspicious activity, installing anti-virus products on all endpoints, and content filtering proxies to track what data enters or exits the network (known as DLP ).
Physical measures might include locks, security guards, and surveillance cameras to secure areas that could become vulnerable.
Data security policies aim to achieve three main objectives: * Apply IT best practices when protecting all data assets; Identity and remediate vulnerabilities promptly;* Reduce dwell time by quickly and efficiently responding to breaches;* And establish procedures that facilitate swift recovery of following data breaches.
The CIA Triad provides data security policymakers with a framework that helps them consider three perspectives when assessing risks to their data:
- Confidentiality- No data can be accessed or viewed by unauthorized people.
- Integrity- The data is not altered by unauthorized people, systems, or failures of the system.
- Accessibility- Data is available when needed.
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A Data Policy as a Solution
An effective data security program includes policies and controls designed to limit the impact of security breaches on business.
First, an in-depth security assessment must be carried out on critical datasets and systems before conducting risk analyses to draft individual policies tailored for each asset using IT best practices and updated threat intelligence.
Data security programs must include programs for managing vulnerabilities to identify and address them as soon as they arise, monitoring indicators of compromise (IOCs) for a possible settlement, and devising response plans should IOCs be detected.
Data threats tend to be seen from three perspectives (CIA Triad); any comprehensive policy must include data protection from all three perspectives.
Are You Protected Against Cyberattacks in the Future by an IT Security Plan? Do You Understand Current Measures Are Sufficient To Safeguard From Ransomware Or Advanced Threats? With an effective IT policy in place, you can safeguard your information and avoid becoming the next victim of identity theft.
Learn about its benefits as well as the four steps you should follow to create one yourself.
Benefits of Implementing an IT Security Policy
Security breaches can be costly for small and midsize businesses (SMB), costing the average SMB an estimated cost of between $ 120,000-1.23 million per security incident.
At the same time, 46% are caused by employees acting without being adequately informed, leaving themselves exposed. It's evident from these statistics that having an IT Security Policy would prove invaluable - here are five advantages a Security Policy provides:
- By increasing overall security at your organization, fewer incidents will take place, and uptime will increase; issues can thus be avoided altogether.
- This tool assists your organization to better comply with compliance and auditing requirements.
- This leads to increased operational efficiencies.
- Increase accountability both among your users and stakeholders within your organization.
- By creating an effective communication and policy enforcement plan for your organization, this solution provides it with a solid communication framework and means to enforce policies effectively.
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4 Steps to Build Your Comprehensive IT Security Policy
Conceivably, creating an IT security policy may seem ambitious, but it is far less daunting than you might expect.
Your employees won't understand requirements without you communicating your policies effectively and regularly updating them - not to mention complying with essential standards that could otherwise go unenforced.
For this reason, IT security policy must be integrated into employee job descriptions and daily routines to maximize compliance and ensure its implementation is successful.
Working with our expert team will save time and money and avoid headaches associated with the process of creating IT security policies for our clients: We utilize a four-phase approach when developing security policies for them:
Phase 1 - Establish the Need for Comprehensive Security Policies, Assess, and Prioritize
Once your goals have been established, aligning security needs with them should help minimize disruptions. Implement your policy stepwise based on priority.
Phase 2 - Create an IT Security Policy
A successful policy framework includes both high-level components as well as more granular ones that can quickly adapt or change according to corporate governance and legal objectives without disrupting workflow and looking for practical tips to secure digital end users within your organization.
Download Safe Computing Best Practices for End Users eBook for assistance today and protect the digital end users within.
Phase 3 - Communicate and Enforce the Security Policy
Communicate the reasons for creating a security policy among your employees, explaining its purpose as part of their daily duties, as well as tailoring material specifically to them for maximum effect.
Phase 4 - Revamp your Security Policy
Security policies are living documents and should be evaluated regularly in order to stay effective. Your IT security policy must be assessed to evaluate if it's working effectively before being altered accordingly; at minimum, an annual review must occur to make sure everything remains relevant.
Why You Need A Policy For Data Security
The protection of data is essential to the success of any business.
A Data Security Policy's Main Purpose Is To Provide Guidelines For:
- Data Inventory Management.
- Data Classification
- Data at Rest
- Data In Transit
- The GDPR is a new way to protect your privacy.
GDPR provides an effective method for protecting privacy. A breach can have devastating repercussions; proprietary information could be exposed to rivals and customer information compromised to regulatory fines resulting in brand damage or reputational loss; ransomware attacks also pose significant threats, potentially rendering data irrecoverable for some time or utterly inaccessible at great expense in their recovery process.
Documenting security measures taken to safeguard data can be an arduous and time-consuming endeavor, yet essential if an organization wants to assess risk adequately on a day-to-day basis.
Without taking an organized and strategic approach to data protection measures, it will remain vulnerable.
Data Inventory Management
Before developing a data security policy for your company, the first step must be identifying all of its data assets and categorizing it all.
It can be an extremely time-consuming task which may overwhelm the IT department. But software tools exist which help streamline this task as well as enhance capabilities by organizing risks and keeping an inventory tracker log of security measures applied against data sets.
Data Classification
Classifying data can be an essential step toward effectively mitigating risks. Data classification involves labeling it according to value, sensitivity, and criticality for further examination.
Data classification enables an organization to effectively assess relative risks for every dataset within their inventory.
Utilizing close risk scores will guide organizations when devising controls and policies designed to minimize risks. It's also important to remember that not all data requires equal security levels - instead, it would be more beneficial for resources to be allocated based on context and risk assessment.
Data at Rest
Data at rest refers to any form of stored information; for instance, local file shares, removable disks, and cloud servers storing production systems can all contain stored information that needs protection using data security policies with appropriate controls in place.
These safeguards include implementing access controls that safeguard data, performing regular backups of said data, and making sure systems can be reached whenever required.
Data In Transit
Data-in-transit, more commonly referred to as "data in motion," refers to any transmission of information between locations or systems, typically carried over public networks like Ethernet or private ones such as WiFi 802.11, Bluetooth, NFC, etc.
Data in transit poses both confidentiality and integrity risks to confidentiality since an attacker could easily modify it during transmission.
By encrypting such traffic between endpoints, an effective data-security policy can protect data against unauthorized access and modification.
GDPR Data Protection Policy
When implemented and enforced in 2023, GDPR will set new data handling standards across organizations conducting business within Europe.
A special protection report must be created and provided on any data classified as personal identifiable information (PII). PII refers to any combination or data which uniquely identifies someone as being theirs.
Below is a selection of examples, but this list should not be considered exhaustive.
- Names
- Addresses
- The registration number is the same as your driver's license or ID.
- Financial data
These data are found in many forms, including databases, invoices, and CRM/accounting applications, as well as images and emails.
In the event of non-compliance, heavy fines or penalties could be imposed. The data security policy must be tailored to each company's business strategy and operations. This means that the policies and controls included in it will depend on the assessment.
Read More: Implement a Strong IT Security Policy to Protect Your Data and Systems
How Should Data Security Policy Be Formulated
Data security programs begin with an assessment of risk, which involves determining the relative risks for each asset and creating a list.
An organization may then choose one of the numerous cybersecurity frameworks following this assessment process.
- NIST Cybersecurity Framework.
- ISO 27001
- COBIT-5
- CISA Cyber Resistance Review (CRR).
- CERT Resilience Management Model.
There are various data protection policy templates to choose from, but it's crucial that one closely mirrors your model of business that requires protection.
Furthermore, be mindful of any regulations in each region when crafting such policies.
Network Security
Network security needs to be the cornerstone of your data and network architecture design, protecting both from any intrusion that might lead to data exfiltration or deletion, including physical or logical segmentations, firewall installation, monitoring solutions, monitoring devices' configuration changes as well as any security threats from outsiders.
Security products designed specifically to address large businesses provide enhanced protection, using network telemetry data to detect suspicious activities quickly.
SOAR and XDR products enable greater business security through enhanced detection capabilities that utilize network telemetry data for detection, notification, and response of such activity.
Your network security management efforts should seek to create and implement a system that prevents hackers from accessing sensitive information, detect indicators of compromise, and provide relevant data when security teams detect any suspicious activities.
Workstation Security
Endpoint workstations are essential components in protecting sensitive information that resides on them or provides remote access.
Compromise to these workstations could see sensitive data stolen and then sent directly to an attacker; ransomware might even be installed onto these PCs to make all files inaccessible until payment from them has been received by them.
Workstation security must be ensured through IT security standards. Examples of workstation security controls:
- We are configuring user accounts with minor rights.
- Passwords must have a certain amount of entropy.
- Installation and maintenance of updated endpoint products (antivirus) to detect and stop malicious execution.
Password Security
The importance of passwords in IT security cannot be overstated. Passwords serve as the initial defense for sensitive accounts and systems.
Thus, it's imperative to implement strong password management practices and multi-factor authentication if possible; one compromised password could compromise an entire corporate network.
Keyspace refers to the maximum possible combination permitted under the policy, which forces users to use strong passwords that are harder to crack using brute force or hacking methods.
A minimum keyspace requirement encourages strong password selection from users resulting in more excellent resistance against brute force attacks or hacking attempts.
Passwords should be hashed using an effective algorithm such as Bcrypt to increase their difficulty to crack by adding salts (also referred to as nonces) with every password hashed.
Acceptable Use Policy
An organization's security depends heavily on its employees; without end users who understand their responsibilities and a data security policy in place, any security plan becomes worthless.
An acceptable use policy outlines how assets within an enterprise are utilized and any restrictions which apply.
Restrictions placed upon devices connected to corporate networks by constraints can include what applications and websites are permitted or restricted on each device within that network and any actions or activities allowed or forbidden from occurring there.
Policies shouldn't be taken lightly, and monitoring is the key way of making sure they're followed through.
Encryption
In order to protect sensitive data from unauthorized access, both at rest and while being transmitted. Data security policies should include policies detailing which encryption methods (algorithms/bit strength) experts recommend as safeguards that will provide sufficient levels of security.
Examples of encryption include SSL/TLS certificates that authenticate cloud-based web servers; full disk encrypted devices which protect hard drives, removable disks, and mobile phones from being stolen or mishandled; password hashing in order to avoid storing plaintext information - these are just three forms of protection used against thieves and adversaries alike.
Email data is vitally important to businesses of all kinds. It contains crucial business secrets as well as customer details that must be protected at all costs - strong passwords and multi-factor authentication should always be implemented when handling email communications, while SSL/TLS connections to servers should only ever use secure versions of SMTP or IMAP protocols for authentication purposes.
Your business must use best practices when setting up its own email server rather than subcontracting to managed providers to protect the server with appropriate authentication mechanisms that require minimal privileges and segregate it from all other servers in its environment.
Remote Access
Cloud services and resources have become more frequently employed, enabling remote access. As this opens the IP addresses for cloud-based public services such as VPN/RDP connections or VPNs to attackers, special consideration should be paid to security controls to safeguard these vulnerable services and resources.
Application updates should be applied regularly, particularly if security patches need installing. Vulnerability scans and penetration tests should also be conducted periodically in order to check implementation and configuration properly.
When outsourcing resource management to another party, be sure you trust them enough, as they'll have access to your personal data.
Data Retention
Data retention refers to the requirements that organizations must abide by to archive business and legal records in an organized fashion.
Publicly traded companies, for instance, must keep financial data for up to X months or years after financial transactions occur. Likewise, data retention policies refer to operational procedures within an organization designed to make sure backup copies of critical data remain available until necessary and then properly deleted when no longer needed.
Contrastingly, GDPR enforces the "right to be forgotten," where individuals' private information can be removed from online searches or company databases; companies then must take measures to safeguard data retention.
Data Back-Up
While effective security controls that are proactive can lower the probability of attacks, an effective security posture must also include reactive elements.
Security controls are necessary in order to repair damages wrought by cyber attacks, the best defense being creating backups that may also come in handy during system outages or human mistakes.
This backup strategy, one of the oldest on record, stipulates that at least three copies must exist, including the current production copy; at least two additional backup copies should also exist in two different formats and at an offsite location; one should even exist offsite.
Mobile Device Data
We must take into account both stored and transmitted data when formulating our security policy for mobile device data.
Full-drive encryption should be employed on mobile devices that contain sensitive information as they are easily stolen; consider creating a backup plan just in case something should happen to it. Furthermore, for better transit protection, mobile users should connect only to WiFi access points with encryption - public ones shouldn't even be utilized without restrictions or whenever absolutely necessary.
Guest WiFi networks should also be segmented and separate from your internal network to prevent data transmission that might expose information on devices connected to an internal network, including broadcast packets for network management purposes.
How to Design and Implement a Data Security Policy
Designing and implementing a data security policy involves following several general steps, which may differ depending on your organization.
These steps can be summarized as:
- Create a complete asset list.
- Select all data sets and determine their relative exposure risk and criticality.
- Data security policies can be designed using relative risk scores.
- Create security controls that are comprehensive and appropriate for every dataset, taking into account the infrastructure.
- Check the effectiveness of security controls.
- Document any learnings and document them.
- As needed, maintain and monitor the controls for data security.
Maintain and monitor controls for data security on an ongoing basis, consulting industry standards when necessary for guidance.
They outline IT security practices based on factors like data sensitivity and operational importance, as well as where it is stored. Policies used to implement them must also be regularly tested to measure their effectiveness; any modifications to your business or infrastructure require updates of its data security policy as soon as they occur.
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Summary
Data security policies should take into account an organization's assets and infrastructure when developing security policies and measures to safeguard data.
Both proactive and reactive controls need to be in place so data can be protected effectively.
Industry-standard frameworks exist to assist organizations with designing and implementing policies and controls based on best industry practices.
At the same time, not an effortless undertaking, planning, implementing, and upholding good data security policies are much preferable to incurring catastrophic losses due to cyber-attacks or ransomware attacks.
