Can’t make it up

Can’t make it up

A note on LinkedIn on why managements need IT usage policies to prove their compliance and to act legally and fairly towards their employees. I suggest that ISO27001 is useful as a technical standard and COBIT as an organisational one.

This was written in the light of a couple of cases I had to deal with as an accompanying rep. or as an advisor.

You can’t claim that users are not performing if you can’t prove the IT systems work as documented. You can’t pursue a conduct disciplinary against people operating a policy. You can’t fulfil FOI or SAR requests if the data retention policy is suspect. You can’t be sure that corruption has not occurred if there is inadequate segregation of duties.

Having policy will help the organisation answer the following questions. Is our software supported?  Why and how was that data deleted? What should be logged? Who has permission to read, amend and run these programs and/or this data? Are our vendors signed up to our IT security goals? Why do you not know this?

This is all defined in these standards, and the GDPR makes certification to good practice evidence of good will. ISO27001 and COBIT are the big boys in town to prove technical and organisational protection.

You can’t make it up anymore. …