Corporate IT security policy

A corporate IT security policy aims to:

• Prevent misuse
• Detect misuse through regular checking
• Investigate misuse through the use of monitoring software and audit trails
• Prevent unauthorised access
• Establish procedures for keeping data, for example, backup up data and maintaining passwords to limit access to files
• Lay down disciplinary procedures for breaches of security

Data is vital to organisations and companies. Any loss, theft or accidental disclosure could have catastrophic results. For example, a greenhouse salesman travelling around the country selling greenhouses would not want his list of customers or sales figures to be lost. The data would contain information about identifiable people and therefore contravene the DPA. Also, rival companies could steal his customers!

The Corporate IT security policy aims to:

• Make employees aware of their responsabilities with regards to data security
• Define an audit trail to record transactions
• To define how a company should comply with the current IT legislation