Most small and medium-sized organizations lack well-designed IT Security policies to ensure the success of their cyber security strategies and efforts. The omission of cyber security policy can result from various reasons, but often include limited resources to assist with developing policies, slow adoption by leadership and management, or simply a lack of awareness of the importance of having an effective web security program in place.

A cyber security policy identifies the rules and procedures that all individuals accessing and using an organization’s IT assets and resources must follow. So why do we need to have IT Security Policies? The goal of these network security policies is to address security threats and implement strategies to mitigate IT security vulnerabilities, as well as defining how to recover when a network intrusion occurs. Furthermore, the policies provide guidelines to employees on what to do and what not to do. They also define who gets access to what, and what the consequences are for not following the rules.

Regardless of size, it is important for every organization to have documented IT Security Policies, to help protect the organization’s data and other valuable assets. It is a requirement for organizations must comply with various regulations such as PCI, HIPAA, GDPR, etc. The key factor is to have “documented” security policies that clearly define your organization’s position on security. This can be of critical importance in the event of a data breach and/or litigation discovery.