Security Policies
Security policies are a formal set of rules which is issued by an organization to ensure that the user who are authorized to access company technology and information assets comply with rules and guidelines related to the security of information. It is a written document in the organization which is responsible for how to protect the organizations from threats and how to handles them when they will occur. A security policy also considered to be a “living document” which means that the document is never finished, but it is continuously updated as requirements of the technology and employee changes.
Need of Security policies-
1) It increases efficiency.
The best thing about having a policy is being able to increase the level of consistency which saves time, money and resources. The policy should inform the employees about their individual duties, and telling them what they can do and what they cannot do with the organization sensitive information.
2) It upholds discipline and accountability
When any human mistake will occur, and system security is compromised, then the security policy of the organization will back up any disciplinary action and also supporting a case in a court of law. The organization policies act as a contract which proves that an organization has taken steps to protect its intellectual property, as well as its customers and clients.
3) It can make or break a business deal
It is not necessary for companies to provide a copy of their information security policy to other vendors during a business deal that involves the transference of their sensitive information. It is true in a case of bigger businesses which ensures their own security interests are protected when dealing with smaller businesses which have less high-end security systems in place.
4) It helps to educate employees on security literacy
A well-written security policy can also be seen as an educational document which informs the readers about their importance of responsibility in protecting the organization sensitive data. It involves on choosing the right passwords, to providing guidelines for file transfers and data storage which increases employee’s overall awareness of security and how it can be strengthened.
We use security policies to manage our network security. Most types of security policies are automatically created during the installation. We can also customize policies to suit our specific environment. There are some important cybersecurity policies recommendations describe below-
1. Virus and Spyware Protection policy
This policy provides the following protection:
- It helps to detect, removes, and repairs the side effects of viruses and security risks by using signatures.
- It helps to detect the threats in the files which the users try to download by using reputation data from Download Insight.
- It helps to detect the applications that exhibit suspicious behaviour by using SONAR heuristics and reputation data.
2. Firewall Policy
This policy provides the following protection:
- It blocks the unauthorized users from accessing the systems and networks that connect to the Internet.
- It detects the attacks by cybercriminals.
- It removes the unwanted sources of network traffic.
3. Intrusion Prevention policy
This policy automatically detects and blocks the network attacks and browser attacks. It also protects applications from vulnerabilities. It checks the contents of one or more data packages and detects malware which is coming through legal ways.
4. LiveUpdate policy
This policy can be categorized into two types one is LiveUpdate Content policy, and another is LiveUpdate Setting Policy. The LiveUpdate policy contains the setting which determines when and how client computers download the content updates from LiveUpdate. We can define the computer that clients contact to check for updates and schedule when and how often clients computer check for updates.
5. Application and Device Control
This policy protects a system’s resources from applications and manages the peripheral devices that can attach to a system. The device control policy applies to both Windows and Mac computers whereas application control policy can be applied only to Windows clients.
6. Exceptions policy
This policy provides the ability to exclude applications and processes from detection by the virus and spyware scans.
7. Host Integrity policy
This policy provides the ability to define, enforce, and restore the security of client computers to keep enterprise networks and data secure. We use this policy to ensure that the client’s computers who access our network are protected and compliant with companies? securities policies. This policy requires that the client system must have installed antivirus.