We hear reports of new data breaches almost daily. While most of them are fairly complex stories, they most always begin at some point with a human "insider" making a mistake. In fact, 2011 could be considered the “Year of the Insider.” From the RSA hack and Sony Playstation breach, to the Epsilon e-mail breach [...]
Category Archives: employee security policy
Attackers follow the weakest link The never-ending battle to secure the corporate desktop against viruses, unauthorized software, and spyware now consumes significant resources for many companies. However, as organizations continue to adopt security best-practices to protect their networks, attackers are increasingly targeting the weakest link – the home internet user. Recent studies are now confirming […]
4. Targeted User Groups Not all information security policies are appropriate for every role in the company. Therefore, written information security policy documents should be targeted to specific audiences with the organization. Ideally, these audiences should align with functional user roles within the organization. (See Information Security Roles and Responsibilities Made Easy, by Charles Cresson [...]
In order for written information security policies to have “teeth”, there must be consequences for employees that do not follow policies, and this fact must be documented as part of the published policy. The “sanctions” portion of most security policies reads something like this: “Failure to comply with this policy will result in disciplinary action, […]
Legal precedents are beginning to dictate a new standard for the notification of policy changes to your customers and employees. In the “old days” organizations would post changes to information security policies on the corporate intranet, and perhaps even notify employees that these changes occurred via email or some other means. However, in legal actions […]