After you have identified what you would like to include in the policy, you can use it as a foundation or framework for the document. Business owners should also take the time to consult with other IT professionals who can provide additional insight on how to write a thorough security policy. What to Include in Your Written Security Policy Outline Your Company’s IT Guidelines Your written security policy should clearly outline the company’s IT guidelines in a way that’s easy for both technical and non-technical users to read and understand. The guidelines should provide instructions on how employees can safely browse the internet, access their social media and log into their email accounts at work or while using devices provided by the company. We also recommend that you include a section with instructions on how workers can create more secure online passwords. Document Every IT Process and Procedure A written security policy should include an overview of the company’s entire IT processes and procedures. Write down how each department should safely handle sensitive information. Include a protocol sharing information on how workers can report lost or stolen mobile phones and laptops. Many written IT security policies contain detailed processes and procedures for how employees can report cybercriminals and data breaches. Make sure to have a section that reveals what workers can do to detect potential threats and prevent leaks. Remember to include real world or offline security protocols as well. Employees should know how to handle office visitors and other important security measures. Determine Your Company’s Overall Technology Standards The policy should include an overview of the company’s technology standards. Every employee must understand what categories of data are considered sensitive and how to keep it classified after they attend a Security Awareness Training. Workers should also know how to safely use third party services, including cloud and file sync services like Gmail and Dropbox. Outline Employee Roles and Responsibilities Finally, your written IT policy should outline which jobs and responsibilities are in charge of sensitive data or devices. For example, your Human Resources and marketing department will have access to confidential information involving your employees and clients. Your written security policy must have instructions on how they should handle the data. Strict rules can also reveal how much remote workers, freelance workers and other contributors can access restricted data. Contact White Mountain IT Today Please contact us today online or call (603) 889-0800 if your company needs a written security policy. We’d be happy to speak with you and learn more about your company’s IT needs. At White Mountain IT, we have extensive experience creating professional written security policies for companies. We specialize in providing professional computer consulting services and managed IT services to businesses in the surrounding New England area and across the country.
Every business should have an acceptable use policy so that employees know what the permitted uses of company computers and networks are. Without a clear policy, they don’t know what’s allowed or not. The results can include overuse of resources, bad security practices, and friction between managers and employees. Everyone should understand where the boundaries are. General restrictions Certain activities should always be prohibited. They include: Illegal activities, including fraud, threats, and harassment. Spamming by email or any other channel. Making unauthorized representations on behalf of the employer. Circumventing device and network security. Introducing malicious software, such as spyware, worms, and ransomware. Disclosing confidential information, except as permitted in one’s job. Revealing account passwords to anyone else. Actions prohibited by company policies. Software policies A company should carefully consider whether and to what extent employees will be allowed to install software. Giving them blanket permission to install software on their assigned machines opens up security risks. A common approach is to allow only authorized IT people to install software on employees’ machines. BYOD and telecommuting policies The policy should specify whether employees may use their own devices on the company network. This includes telecommuting as well as smartphones and tablets. If employees can use personal mobile devices on the network, the AUP needs to specify what security measures are required. This may include installing company-mandated software to separate business and personal use. The policy needs to make it clear that any monitoring applies only to the business side of employee-owned devices and personal use is private. If the policy allows telecommuting, it should require the use of a VPN and protection of the account associated with it. Social media and time sinks The company’s policy on using social media, watching videos, and other potentially time-wasting activities will depend on the business culture and the network’s ability to absorb the bandwidth. Some companies need to be very strict, prohibiting nearly all non-business use. Others will trust their employees not to abuse their privileges. A policy shouldn’t be so strict that it interferes with necessary work activities. A blanket prohibition on watching video could interfere with work-related education and research. A strict policy should allow usage for purposes that are part of doing one’s job. A few companies have such stringent security requirements that they have to prohibit all nonessential activity; they’re a special case which is beyond the scope of this article. At the other end, there should always be rules to limit clearly excessive usage. Even a lenient policy should state that social media use is acceptable only if it doesn’t interfere with the employee’s work duties, isn’t detrimental to the employer, and doesn’t involve unauthorized claims to speak for the employer. The company’s policies on trademarks, harassment, discrimination, and so on should be incorporated by reference. Enforcement The policy needs to explain how it will be enforced. There are several points it needs to cover. If user activity is monitored, even just occasionally, the AUP needs to say so. If some areas, such as the content of email, are protected from monitoring, it should say that also. Making this point clear protects the employer from ill will and possibly from legal action. The consequences should be made clear with a phrase such as “up to and including termination.” The […]
That really depends on how the interfaces under development are adopted. Here, we?ll list the anticipated development of new interfaces and when we might expect to see these technologies emerge. Where We Stand Today Today, the keyboard and mouse are still alive and well, yet to be phased out by the touch gestures that are incorporated into more and more devices today, or the voice responsiveness that many technologies leverage via virtual assistants. Augmented and virtual reality are also becoming more mainstream, which makes it increasingly likely that they will someday soon make a practical appearance in the office space. Digital assistants have also been making a splash in the professional environment, making many rote operations more streamlined and efficient. What We Might See Soon The key to an effective user interface is how intuitive it is for the user to pick up a device and start using it successfully. This is what was largely responsible for the smartphone to experience explosive growth. However, there is a good chance that this growth will ultimately enable us to no longer need to touch our devices at all. Project Soli, one of Google?s many, many ventures, shows promise toward creating a touch-free manual interface, gestures being used to manipulate our devices via radar. This can also be seen as a precursor to the three-dimensional interface, as seen in films like Minority Report. There has actually been progress made toward this kind of interface by researcher John Underkoffer, who assisted with the creation of the movie. We can also look to the Iron Man film franchise for another glimpse into the potential future of haptic holograms. While the holograms that we see in most movies are simply projections of light, the ones leveraged by Tony Stark in his films can be interacted with – edited, reorganized, and fundamentally altered by the viewer in the room. These holograms can even mimic a physical keyboard for the user, suggesting that the need for bulky physical components may not be so long-lived. If we sound excited for this kind of technology to someday exist, it?s because we are. UI So Advanced, It?s Almost Unbelievable What if you could control devices and information using only your brain? Bioelectronics and Brain-Computer Interface technology could make this a possibility in the not-so-distant future. Basically, by scanning a user?s brain waves, a computer can translate these waves into actionable commands. This technology is already being tested in things like motorized wheelchairs and robotic limbs to aid those who rely on these tools. However, this is just the start? further research is being made into how BCI can be used to control devices and household utilities. Communication is another function that BCI can be used to restore or augment. Implants have been developed that allow typing to be done with only the mind, while others are in development that would directly translate brain waves into text. Perhaps most incredibly, an experiment was conducted that functionally replicated the effect of telepathy. By having a subject in India think the word ?hello,? converting that thought to binary code and emailing it to France, a subject in France was able to receive the message after it was reformatted into brainwaves. On a related note, BCI has also allowed us to take (admittedly low-quality) recordings […]
Customizing the Quick Access ToolbarIn the top-left corner of the window, you?ll see the Quick Access Toolbar. This houses options such as Save, Undo, and Redo. You can adjust your preferences to make these buttons even more helpful. To make these changes, you?ll first need to access the Quick Access Toolbar?s options. Follow this path: File > Options > Quick Access Toolbar. It will look like this: From this selection, you should notice Save, Undo, and Redo options in the Quick Access Toolbar. This is nice, but it?s generally easier to use keyboard shortcuts for these tools. You can keep various tools in the Quick Access Toolbar, changing them up as needed. You just need to select the items and click the appropriate button for Add>> or <<Remove. The list will default to Popular Commands, and so will we for this tutorial, but know that it can be customized to suit your needs. If you use Word to put data into context, including lists and tables, you can customize your Quick Access Toolbar to meet these preferences. Click OK and your changes will be saved. You can always revert to the default settings by using the Reset option if you?re not happy with your selections. Customize the RibbonThe ribbon is where you find your options for Home, Insert, and others. Depending on usage, you may have an increased or decreased need for certain options. Let?s say that you have no use for the Mailings or Draw tab, and you?d like to remove them. You can do this by accessing File > Options > Customize Ribbon. You can adjust what?s displayed in the ribbon by unchecking the box, thus removing them from the ribbon display. Customizing the Status BarAt the bottom of the window, you?ll see the Status Bar. This can be used to provide you with prioritized information. To set this up, right-click on the Status Bar and select or deselect the options. For more great tips and tricks, be sure to subscribe to our blog.
The Causes of Data Loss When approximately seven out of ten companies experience data loss, it pays to pay attention to the root causes. Before we get into the numbers, do you have any predictions? What percentage of data would you estimate is lost during a natural disaster, for example? How much would you expect human error to come into play? You might be surprised to learn how common it is for some data loss causes to impact companies, while others are far more rare than many would expect. For example, natural disasters only account for approximately one percent of lost data in total. Comparatively, hardware failure or other system malfunctions lead to 78 percent of data loss events. How Perception Influences Data Loss Surprised? Many company decision makers likely would be. The knee-jerk reaction might be to focus the majority of a business? efforts on preventing external causes of data loss in the first place. However, like we just went over, these are responsible for a minimal number of data loss events – it is far more common for hardware to fail or for a user to make a mistake than for a disaster event to strike your place of operations. Then we have to ask ourselves if it really matters. Other consequences of a given disaster (property damage and the like) notwithstanding, data loss is pretty much just data loss. You have your valuable data, and suddenly, you don?t. At that point, the end result overwhelms the factors that led to it. Make no mistake: before you lose your data, these factors are crucial to know. How else will you be able to avoid losing your data in the first place? The real value of a data backup lies in its being there when you need it, regardless of why that might be. Ensuring Your Backup Will Be There Of course, there?s backing up your data, and then there?s having a data backup. What?s the difference? In a word, reliability. There are plenty of means of backing up data. USB flash drives, for instance, can be used to save a copy of your data? but so can the cloud, and the cloud is a lot harder to lose. It should come as no surprise, then, to find out that we always recommend that your business? backups are kept in the cloud. Not only are they accessible there, they are also protected from any data-loss-inducing events that may strike your location. For more information about how to prepare a backup for your business, reach out to our professionals! Call (603) 889-0800 today.
