Company Background & Operating Environment
Red Clay Renovations is an internationally recognized, awarding winning firm that specializes in the renovation and rehabilitation of residential buildings and dwellings. The company specializes in updating homes using “smart home” and “Internet of Things” technologies while maintaining period correct architectural characteristics. Please refer to the company profile posted in the online classroom for additional background information and information about the company’s operating environment.
Policy Issue & Plan of Action
The Manager’s Deskbook contains issue specific policies and implementation procedures which are required to mitigate risks to the company and to otherwise ensure good governance of the company’s operations. The Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) and key CISO staff members held a kick-off meeting last week to identify issue specific policies which should be added to the company’s policy system in the IT Governance category. The policies will be disseminated throughout the company by incorporating them into the Manager’s Deskbook. The required issue specific policies are:
- Data Breach Response Policy
- Preventing / Controlling Shadow IT Policy
- Management and Use of Corporate Social Media Accounts Policy
For the purposes of this assignment, you will create a policy recommendations briefing package (containing an Executive Summary and draft policies) and submit that to your instructor for grading.
Note: In a “real world” environment, the policy recommendations briefing package would be submitted to the IT Governance board for discussion and vetting. After revisions and voting, a package containing the accepted policies would be sent to all department heads and executives for comment and additional vetting. These comments would be combined and integrated into the policies and sent out for review again. It usually takes several rounds of review and comments before the policies can be sent to the Chief of Staff’s office for forwarding to the Corporate Governance Board. During the review & comments period, the policies will also be subjected to a thorough legal review by the company’s attorneys. Upon final approval by the Corporate Governance Board, the policies will be adopted and placed into the Manager’s Deskbook. This entire process can take 9 to 12 months, if not longer.
Your Task Assignment
As a staff member supporting the CISO, you have been asked to research and then draft an issue specific policy for each of the identified issues (three separate policies). These policies are to be written for MANAGERS and must identify the issue, explain what actions must be taken to address the issue (the company’s “policy”), state the required actions to implement the policy, and name the responsible / coordinating parties (by level, e.g. department heads, or by title on the organization chart).
After completing your research and reviewing sample policies from other organizations, you will then prepare an “approval draft” for each issue specific policy.
- The purpose of each issue specific policy is to address a specific IT governance issue that requires cooperation and collaboration between multiple departments within an organization.
- Each issue specific policy should be no more than two typed pages in length (single space paragraphs with a blank line between).
- You will need to be concise in your writing and only include the most important elements for each policy.
- You may refer to an associated “procedure” if necessary, e.g. a Procedure for Requesting Issuance of a Third Level Domain Name (under the company’s Second Level Domain name) or a Procedure for Requesting Authorization to Establish a Social Media Account.
Your “approval drafts” will be combined with a one page Executive Summary (explaining why these issue specific policies are being brought before the IT Governance Board).
Research:
- Review the table of contents and relevant chapters in the Certified Information Privacy Professional textbook to find information about legal and regulatory drivers.
- Review NIST’s definition of an “Issue Specific Policy” and contents thereof in NIST SP 800-12 Section 5.3. This document provides information about the content of an issue specific policy (as compared to comprehensive system and enterprise security policies).
- Review the weekly readings and resource documents posted in the classroom. Pay special attention to the resources which contain “issues” and “best practices” information for:
- Data Breach Response
- Preventing / Controlling Shadow IT
- Social Media
- Review NIST guidance for required / recommended security controls (see NIST SP 800-12, NIST SP 800-53, and NIST SP 800-100). Some suggested control families are:
- Access Control (AC) control family (for Social Media policy)
- Incident Response (IR) control family (for Data Breach policy)
- System and Services Acquisition (SA) control family (Domain Name, Shadow IT, Website Governance)
- Find and review additional authoritative / credible sources on your own which provide information about IT security issues (related to data breaches / responses, shadow IT, and/or social media use) which require policy solutions.
Write:
- Prepare briefing package with approval drafts of the three IT related policies for the Manager’s Deskbook. Your briefing package must contain the following:
- Executive Summary
- “Approval Drafts” for
- Data Breach Response Policy
- Preventing / Controlling Shadow IT Policy
- Management and Use of Corporate Social Media Accounts Policy
As you write your policies, make sure that you address IT and cybersecurity concepts using standard terminology.
- Use a professional format for your policy documents and briefing package. Your policy documents should be consistently formatted and easy to read.
- You must include a cover page with the assignment title, your name, and the due date. Your reference list must be on a separate page at the end of your file. These pages do not count towards the assignment’s page count.
- Common phrases do not require citations. If there is doubt as to whether or not information requires attribution, provide a footnote with publication information or use APA format citations and references.
- You are expected to write grammatically correct English in every assignment that you submit for grading. Do not turn in any work without (a) using spell check, (b) using grammar check, (c) verifying that your punctuation is correct and (d) reviewing your work for correct word usage and correctly structured sentences and paragraphs.
- Consult the grading rubric for specific content and formatting requirements for this assignment.
- Submit your Manager’s Deskbook briefing package in MS Word format (.docx or .doc file) for grading using your assignment folder. (Attach the file.)
