Page last updated on Thursday, April 7 2005 at 1846 UK

Documentation & Policies

Effective user policies and incident response procedures can reduce the impact of a potential problem.

Acceptable use policies

As cybercrime becomes more prolific, the owners of corporate computer equipment are increasingly being held responsible for the actions of users. Downloading pornography, sending offensive e-mails and posting defamatory messages are all examples of actions by staff which have landed their employers in hot water.

Unfortunately, companies which have tried to distance themselves from the actions of their staff by dismissing the offenders often find that they face a barrage of legal challenges and employment issues.

The solution is to make sure that staff are clearly aware of what they can and can't do with company ICT equipment and the best way of doing this is to have a clear and comprehensive acceptable use policy. Once all staff members have signed up to the agreement as part of their contract of employment, it becomes a simple matter of procedure to police ICT usage.

To make sure your business is covered by a comprehensive ICT acceptable use policy, TKM offers a full consultation service, during which we examine each area of ICT usage in your business and deliver a use policy which covers practically all eventualities.

Procedural policies

There are many routine procedures which are pivotal to the ongoing operation of a safe and secure corporate ICT system. Unfortunately, many of these are overlooked in the busy schedule of a typical IT department.

TKM has developed a range of procedural policies which can help your ICT staff to keep on top of routine security tasks such as password changes, expired user removal, access rights review and so on.

With input from your own ICT staff, we can assemble a schedule of operations, each of which is accompanied by a concise guide to best practice. By following this calendar, you can be assured that you are taking reasonable precautions to protect your ICT infrastructure without tying up staff resources or compromising usability.

Incident Response Manuals

For medium to large organisations, it is important to have a clearly defined and documented procedure for dealing with incidents involving ICT equipment. This avoids the sort of improvised approach which can lead to incomplete investigation and unreliable evidence. The scope of a written incident response manual varies depending on the size and complexity of your organisation. In any event, making sure that front-line technical staff are briefed on procedure is the best way of ensuring that any incident is handled properly and with the greatest chance of successful resolution.

TKM provides a number of pre-defined procedures as part of our incident response manuals, each of which has been designed with evidence handling and legal considerations in mind. Any custom procedures are first approved by our legal advisory team before incorporation in a response manual to make sure that they provide adequate protection in the event of civil or criminal proceedings post-incident.

Print page Print this article