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Security Manual Template
ISO27000, Sarbanes - Oxley, PCI-DSS & HIPAA Compliant
Multi-Country License Options
The Global Standard for Security Policies and Procedures
The License for the Security Manual Template can be purchased for use for either by a single company in a single country, single company in a country group like the EU, or by a single company for worldwide use.
License Options
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A single (1) country for a single (1) company (DUNS number)
Standard License -
A country group (North America, Central America, South America, EU, Africa, Middle East, Asia, or Pan-Pacific) for multiple related company groups -
Enterprise License - Worldwide (International) use for multiple related company groups Worldwide License
License Conditions
The template can be placed on the enterprise's Intranet and be used as the standard for all divisions and operating units of the enterprise. The template is not for re-sale or re-distribution by consultants or VARs. If a consultant or a VAR wishes to use this for its clients Janco Associates should be contacted directly
Janco can provide coordination services for the enterprise on a time and materials basis. In addition Janco can save copies of a companies customized DRP in its archives for retrieval in by the enterprise.
Contact us directly for pricing of these services at +011 435 940-9300 x 101.
Testimonials
Testimonial - Dave Baker - City of Hamilton -I have found the Janco template invaluable!
Testimonial - Bob Rifenbury -MCSE/CCNA Lauch Testing Lab -The Janco Template saved me about 6 months of work!
Testimonial - Kelly Keeler - Martin's Point Health Care -I have received and I began using the template immediately. IT IS GREAT! Made this process a snap for me. Cut my documentation time down from. weeks to hours! This document has made, what began to be an overwhelming process turn into a snap!
Testimonial - Juan Stamos - Mexico City Corporation -We had a DRP in place, but needed a more user friendly structure. The Security Manual Template (Gold edition) has that structure. It was very easy to quickly move our policies into Janco's DRP Template -- a real added value.
This template is not for resale or re-distribution
Security Policies and Procedures Multi-Site Implementation Considerations
iPhone5 to make remote computing easier
January 28th, 2012
According to the Jan. 25 reports "reliable source at Foxconn in China," the various prototypes circulating around that production facility share some common features, including a 4-plus-inch display and a casing that no longer follows the design aesthetics of the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S. "No teardrop-shaped devices, as rumored in the lead up to the iPhone 4S," related 9to5Mac. "Samples so far have been symmetrical in thickness (also longer/wider)."
Scuttlebutt concerning a larger iPhone 5 screen has circulating for some time, as the blog points out. That being said, variations between the prototypes suggest that Apple has yet to settle on a release version. If Apple follows the release cadence it established with previous iPhone iterations, this newest smartphone could make its debut in either the summer or early fall timeframes.
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IT Hiring Trends
January 16th, 2012
If you've been promising your loyal IT staffers that you'll take care of them with raises when the economy turns around, 2012 is unlikely to be the year you get to make good on those promises. While employees in some roles will see increases this year, raises will be held in check, according to the most recent annual salary survey and forecast from Janco Associates. And CIOs and other executive-level IT managers will be in the same boat, likely to see level compensation from last year.
Find out what it's all about. See the IT 2012 IT Salary Survey
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Factors to Consider in a Disaster Recovery & Business Continuity Plan
January 8th, 2012
The Janco Disaster Recovery Plan & Business Continuity Template takes into consideration all of the items related to various layers of operations that most enterprises need to consider if they want to continue after a disaster occurs. These include:
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Infrastructure focus of IT Budgets
December 20th, 2011
Mobility and wireless network infrastructures are the big takers when it comes to IT budget planning for 2012, according to a research study. Organizations are moving to the next stage of the IT infrastructure build-out across multiple budget areas, and the 2012 IT Investment Patterns Study shows how the strategy trends of innovation, integration and reversion are having a significant impact on 2012 spending patterns.
The IT environment is too complex to rely on outmoded ways to keep the business functioning and thriving flawlessly. To balance the many crucial and changing enterprise demands to move the organization forward, an IT governance process is required. This increases risks in expectations of IT --- the growth of the Internet, compliance concerns, mobile computing and advanced security risks as reasons for the critical need for IT governance. Instituting a governance process can serve as a catalyst that can effectively bring together the dynamics of cross-enterprise communication and summarize key, relevant data to provide critical metrics to make informed decisions.
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Patch Management Policy Released
December 13th, 2011
With the ever rising availability of enterprise data to mobile users there has been a significant increase in security exposure for information and network assets. The CEO of Janco Associates said, "As many as 90 percent of successful attacks are against vulnerabilities in which a patch already exists. Despite this statistic, many computers do not have the latest security patches installed, putting organizations at serious risk from a variety of malware threats. Patches are time-consuming to track and administer, and it is often difficult to see which computers actually have critical patches installed correctly. Without this visibility, IT managers have no simple method of identifying computers most at risk." He added, "To meet this requirement Janco has added a Patch Management Policy to its popular CIO Infrastructure Policy Bundle."
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Microsoft's IE follows FireFox spell check to be added
November 9th, 2011
Firefox has had spell check implemented for several versions. Microsoft is now trying to catch up.
Microsoft is adding a commonly requested feature - spell-checking - to Internet Explorer (IE) 10. The feature is part of the already-released IE 10 developer previews, but Microsoft called it out and explained it in detail on the IEBlog.
IE 9 doesn't include spell-checking. That lacking feature is cited by more than a few users as one reason they aren't using IE 9. But because IE 10 will be the version of IE bundled with Windows 8, which will be optimized for touch input, spell checking is no longer taking a back seat.
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Healthcare IT jobs are plentiful
November 8th, 2011
Many IT expertise pros have lost jobs, however healthcare is hiring to fill an expected shortage of 50,000 workers to support implementation of electronic health records and health information exchange. HIMSS and ASHHRA want to let technology professionals know and they want to have access to each other's knowledge.
Health Care vs. Financial Services Job Growth
Employment is on the rise in Healthcare IT and spending will reach $40 billion by the end of this year. Much of that growth will come from spending on electronic health record (EHR) systems, mobile health applications and efforts to comply with new government standards. Boosted by increased spending on healthcare software -- which is needed for the rollout of EHR systems -- the U.S. healthcare IT market is expected to grow at a rate of about 24% per year from 2012 to 2014, the study said. Spending on healthcare software rose 20.5% in the past year, from $6.8 billion in 2010 to a projected $8.2 billion this year. Recent mergers and acquisitions in the healthcare IT market also point to growing private-sector interest in software, which will see sales grow at rate of more than 30% annually from 2012 to 2014.
The federal government is devoting $116 million to health IT workforce training in the form of grants to community colleges and graduate medical informatics programs, as well as curriculum development, but that alone won't be enough to make up the entire labor shortage.
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Malware attacks increase
November 5th, 2011
Malware is complex and seemingly everywhere and is often difficult to stop. It knows how to find your data - even on your mobile device and Mac. You can't ignore your "safe" devices any longer: you need to recognize and stop the threats before they do harm.
Malicious software can take the form of a computer virus or worm and disrupt or deny computer operations, steal private or sensitive information or gain unauthorized access to system resources. Since January 2011, serious malware attacks have hit many high-profile organizations who suffered damaging data loss. Some attacks were for kicks, some for money, some for political hacktivist reasons and some for reasons unknown.
One of the best ways to communicate and understand a company and its operating culture is through its policies. Designing and writing policy and communicating it effectively is an essential skill for professionals to have. By having policy carefully developed and communicated, employees will clearly know what the organization expects from them, the degree of control and independence they will have, and what the benefits and consequences are in regard to adhering to policy.
The policies that Janco has created are a must have that every enterprise needs. They can all be accessed by going to the Policy Master Page or the individual policies can accessed directly by clicking on the links below.
The policies have just been updated to comply with all mandated requirements and include electronic forms that can be Emailed, filled out completely on the computer, routed and stored electronically. A totally solution that uses technology at its best.
- CIO IT Infrastructure Policy PDF (All of the policies below which come as individual MS Word files)
- Backup and Backup Retention Policy
- Blog and Personal Web Site Policy (Includes electronic Blog Compliance Agreement Form)
- Incident Communication Plan Policy (Updated to include social networks as a communication path)
- Internet, e-Mail, Social Networking, Mobile Device, Electronic Communications, and Record Retention Policy (Includes 5 electronic forms to aid in the quick deployment of this policy)
- Mobile Device Access and Use Policy
- Outsourcing Policy
- Record Management, Retention, and Destruction Policy
- Sensitive Information Policy (HIPAA Compliant and includes electronic Sensitive Information Policy Compliance Agreement Form)
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) Policy Template with Metrics
- Social Networking Policy
- Telecommuting Policy
- Travel and Off-Site Meeting Policy
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Tax liability impacted by disaster recovery plan
October 27th, 2011
Keeping track of a tax liability among multiple states can get complicated. If you have three servers in three states, software could be running in any one at any time, so youd have to consider presence in all three states. For example, if you have disaster recovery site in Pennsylvania, and that establishes presence in that state. A third party runs it; you many never have people going there and no one touches it, but you have a tax liability in that state. For customers who buy services, even though they're buying from a provider in California, they have to pay sales tax in Pennsylvania because they have a presence there.
Sales and use tax boils down to where a business has a physical presence that opens it up to tax liability within that jurisdiction. But when it comes to the cloud - where services are sold to customers who may access them anywhere from servers located who-knows-where by companies that may be headquartered anyplace - determining presence, and the liabilities that go with it, is anything but straightforward.
The state of New York has ruled that presence is determined by where an application is used, not where it is hosted. The location of the software code, according to the 2009 opinion of the New York Commissioner of Taxation and Finance, was deemed irrelevant. . .because the software could be used just as effectively by the customer even though the customer never received the code on a tangible medium or by download. (Meaning, the customer accessed the software through a browser, as is the case with cloud services.) The fact that the cloud contract provided no grant of license to use software was not found controlling. In other words, the cloud provider should be collecting sales and use tax just as if it were mailing disks to the customer, and the customer should be paying whether or not it receives a perpetual license.
Many states are moving toward an economic presence standard whereby out-of-state businesses establish presence when making sales through an agreement with a person located in that state and the in-state person refers customers to the out-of-state business through a website link.
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Record Retention for the long-term
October 16th, 2011
A whopping 80 percent of the organizations studied have reported a need to retain electronic records for more than 50 years. Can your enterprise store 50 years of electronic records given current technology? Without data loss? Do you think that you can do more than three migrations of archival data from one storage media to the next without data loss?
How many consumers using Internet photo services sites think that your digitized images will still be there 50 years from now?
To address those questions the 100 Year Archive Task Force (100YrATF), operated by the SNIA's Data Management Forum, is as a global, multi-agency group working to define best practices and storage standards for long-term digital information retention.
The 100 Yr ATF was created by SNIA because of the pending crisis in long-term preservation of digital information in the IT datacenter. The crisis has two principle challenges:
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- Losing information that is stored digitally due to corruption, loss of access, loss of discoverability, or loss of readability
- Losing control of the ability to keep up with migrating the overwhelming volume of information to new media and into new logical formats.
What role does the CEO have in the CIOs success
October 9th, 2011
Why should senior management care about their CIOs' problems? Knowing what concerns the CIO could be a first step toward building what could be a more effective IT organization.
- CIOs are hired to be strategic, but spend most of their time in the weeds
Infrastructure uses up 80% of the IT budget, it's no wonder they have difficulty getting to the value-added projects. There is no easy solution to the tension between strategic expectations and operational exigencies, but outsourcing much of what is a commodity, and focusing on competitive differentiators, is a good place to start.
- CIOs are stewards of risk mitigation and cost containment, yet they need to drive innovation
How do you build a culture in which you both tightly control costs yet allow for the failures that everyone knows come with innovation? How do you maintain a locked-down, high-security armored tank of an infrastructure while allowing for the openness that experimentation requires? The problem of securing an organization's data while supporting the innovation that springs from creative employees demanding to use their own devices, build their own applications, and choose their own platforms grows more intense by the day.
- Technology is a long-term investment, but many companies think in quarters
Ten years ago, CIOs had to convince the purchasing group that automating reverse auctions was better than paper RFPs, and that took time. Today, CIOs do not have to convince the business of anything. They assume it will work and they want the payout within a quarter. While CIOs face constrained budgets, the demands on technology only increase. This paradox has plagued the IT organization for 30 years and is heating up now that software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendors increasingly are selling directly to business leaders, promising quick ROI. Then it falls to the CIO to make sure these apps integrate smoothly and securely with the organization's core systems.
- IT pervades and serves every part of the business, yet the IT organization is often removed from it
You would think the word and would function as a connector, a word that implies togetherness. Yet the phrase "IT and the business" does not work that way. Rather, it connotes separateness and difference, creating an us-versus-them culture that belies the actual isolation of IT. The language people use to describe a group has a powerful impact on how it's perceived. If you can manage it, CEOs and senior management should stop using that phrase themselves and encourage others to drop it from their lexicon. But changing language is only one step. Today, CIOs are hiring business relationship executives in the hope of eliminating a useless distinction and a distracting divide.
- CIOs are accountable for project success, but the business has to own the project
Most CIOs proudly proclaim that in their organization, "There are no IT projects, only business projects." This is a wonderful sentiment, but it often becomes a problem during the last mile when the business has to pony up resources to complete an IT implementation. CIO often say, "How do you drive something you cannot really own? If you drive it yourself, people will say, 'Why is this guy doing things to us?'" So, yes, all IT projects should be business projects, but the business needs to be a good faith partner with IT.The best CIOs have figured out how to manage up, around, and through these contradictions, but it is harder without the awareness and support of an enlightened CEO and executive committee.
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Security holes continue to be identified
October 3rd, 2011
Security researchers say they've uncovered a flaw in several smartphone models produced by HTC that gives any application that has Internet access the keys to a trove of information on the phone, including e-mail addresses, GPS locations, phone numbers, and text message data.
Phone models claimed to be affected by the vulnerability are the EVO 3D, EVO 4G, Thunderbolt, and possibly HTC's Sensation line.
The researcherssay they informed HTC of the vulnerability, but after HTC failed to respond to their warning for five days, they went public with their knowledge.
The security gap in the HTC phones stems from modifications the company made in versions of the Android operating system in EVO and Thunderbolt models. Those changes add a suite of logging tools to the system. If a company plants those information collectors on a device, they need to be sure the information they collect is secured and only available to privileged services or the user, after opting in.
The policies that Janco has created are a must have that every enterprise needs. They can all be accessed by going to the Policy Master Page or the individual policies can accessed directly by clicking on the links below.
The policies have just been updated to comply with all mandated requirements and include electronic forms that can be Emailed, filled out completely on the computer, routed and stored electronically. A totally solution that uses technology at its best.
- more info
- CIO IT Infrastructure Policy PDF (All of the policies below which come as individual MS Word files)
- Backup and Backup Retention Policy
- Blog and Personal Web Site Policy (Includes electronic Blog Compliance Agreement Form)
- Incident Communication Plan Policy (Updated to include social networks as a communication path)
- Internet, e-Mail, Social Networking, Mobile Device, Electronic Communications, and Record Retention Policy (Includes 5 electronic forms to aid in the quick deployment of this policy)
- Mobile Device Access and Use Policy
- Outsourcing Policy
- Record Management, Retention, and Destruction Policy
- Sensitive Information Policy (HIPAA Compliant and includes electronic Sensitive Information Policy Compliance Agreement Form)
- Service Level Agreement (SLA) Policy Template with Metrics
- Social Networking Policy
- Telecommuting Policy
- Travel and Off-Site Meeting Policy
Social networking adds new security concerns
October 1st, 2011
CIOs all agree that social networking and endpoint information are a potential liability. The big question is, where does a CIO find a non-intrusive way to protect and classify social network data to minimize risk, all while making sense economically?
Almost half of all enterprises have been victims of social networking attacks, experiencing 25 or more such attacks in the past few years at an average cost of over $27,000 per incident.
The most common sources of threats are phishing emails (47%) and social networking sites (39%). New employees (52%) and contractors (44%) were cited as the most susceptible to social engineering techniques, emphasizing that hackers target staff that they suspect are the weakest security links in organizations, using social networking applications to gather personal and professional information on employees to mount spear phishing attacks.
According to the global survey of over 850 CIOs, IT managers, and security professionals, 86% of all businesses recognize social engineering as a growing security concern. A majority of respondents (51%) cited financial gain as the primary motivation of attacks, followed by competitive advantage and revenge. The highest rate of attacks was reported by energy and utility organizations (61%) with non-profit organizations reported the lowest rate (24%), reinforcing gain as the key reason for attacks.
With compliance requirements and external threats on the rise, no business can afford to leave its data unprotected, especially at the endpoint. Fortunately, IT leaders understand the risk: Fifty-nine percent of recent survey rate backup and protection of desktop and laptop data as crucial or high priority. Unfortunately, even though the majority of survey respondents have something in place, many fall short in terms of meeting needs for identification, classification and discovery. As a result, these firms leave themselves in a position of vulnerability - especially those in highly regulated industries.
- 61% currently using or planning to use a desktop and laptop backup solution consider improving the accessibility and availability of user data a critical or very important objective.
- 50% rate the ability to quickly find endpoint data for discovery and compliance purposes a critical or high priority.
- 47% expect an improvement in the ability to improve compliance with industry and government regulations as a result of the efforts their companies are making to effectively backup, protect and manage endpoint data.
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CIOs Become Pessimistic
September 14th, 2011
CIOs say they expect to continue hiring, although they plan to increase their IT head counts by meager amounts.
Three quarters of the CIOs interviewed by Janco say they have not pushed back existing hiring plans amid the market volatility of the past three months. But almost one third of these same CIOs have delayed hiring plans, citing economic uncertainty, insufficient demand, and pressure from executive management to keep costs down.
Indeed, comments from IT executives about their companies' different staffing situations reveal some of the factors depressing employment. Some companies are making some layoffs plans despite thier strong performance as they continue to outsource and cut back on applications that no longer are cost effective.
However, attracting and retaining qualified employees still ranks as one many CIOs' top concerns. One CIO said that he has 4 open positions that he has been trying to fill for eight months. The CIO says the company is "doing fairly well" and hiring, but he can't find enough of the digital and social-media experts he needs. "We have to mint these people," he says. "We want to bring new people in but the good ones do not want to move." He adds, "We're kind of moving sideways."
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Data breach notification processes are costly
September 12th, 2011
Businesses, government agencies, and educational institutions reported 50 percent more data breaches in this year than last, exposing the personal records of at least 35.7 million Americans.
The financial consequences of such breaches can be severe. Many organizations lose customers and revenue because of the violation of trust incurred from a breach. Due to the growing number of state privacy laws, most breaches require that thosewhose information is compromised must be notified.Most organizations now pay for credit monitoringservices for several years for all those impacted by a breach these services typically cost about $100 per person per year. And in some cases, organizationsare subject to fines for revealing personal information.
A new bill in California's (SB-24) updates current data breach notification laws by requiring organizations to include in the breach notification letters the specifics of the security incident and advice on steps customers should take. The bill also includes provisions mandating that if the security breach affected 500 or more people, the organization must submit a copy of the letter to the state attorney general's office. The bill was signed into law Aug. 31 by Gov. Jerry Brown and will take effect on Jan. 1, 2012.
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The breach notification letters must include information such as the type of personal information exposed, a description of what happened, time of the breach, and toll-free telephone numbers and addresses of major credit reporting agencies in California, according to the new law. The original law did not specify what information had to be included in the letters. The new law also requires the letters to be sent "in the most expedient time possible and without unreasonable delay."
CIO and IT departments are blamed for user shortfalls
September 5th, 2011
Now the CIO not only must be politically correct, but he must also be clairvoyant and understand what can go wrong, be misused, or be abused. The IT Infrastructure must be robust to address this.
When systems are abused the easiest scapegoat is the IT Department. In the recent school webcam case at the Pennsylvania school district the IT department was blamed because they not only failed to inform school officials and administrators of the tracking capabilities of the software, but argued that telling students about the software's ability to remotely trigger notebook Webcams would "defeat its purpose" as a way to recover lost or stolen computers.
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Salaries fall according to one suvey
August 18th, 2011
According to Foote Partners, the average market value for 265 noncertified skills dipped slightly (-0.2 percent) from April to June following consistent gains in the previous five calendar quarters, while pay premiums for 237 IT certifications continued their abysmal performance" for the 18th time in the last 19 quarters, posting an overall loss in market value of nearly 2 percent for the quarter.
Only one category of certifications - database - grew in overall market value (+2.6 percent) in the latest quarterly benchmark update from Foote, bolstered by gains in three Oracle certifications. For noncertified IT skills, four of eight skills categories showed improvement: management, methodology and process skills (+2.4 percent in pay premiums), messaging and communications skills (+1.7 percent), database skills (+0.6 percent) and SAP & enterprise business applications skills (+0.3 percent).
Declines were more widespread, with IT certifications taking the biggest hit, such as entry-level and training certs (-5.9 percent in pay premiums), Web development (-4.0 percent), IT security (-2.9 percent), systems administration and engineering (-2.5 percent), applications development and programming languages (-2.3 percent), and networking certifications (-0.2 percent). Only four of eight categories of noncertified skills recorded losses in market value, though these losses were not as steep as those recorded in the certifications groups.
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Security Policies Required to Stop SPAM
August 14th, 2011
Security policies and audit procedures are required if enterprises look towards stopping spam. Courts and lawsuits do not help.
For example, spammers allegedly obtained the login credentials for Facebook accounts. The accounts were then used to send spam to those users' friends. The spam either linked to other phishing sites that sought to collect more Facebook account credentials or linked to other commercial Web sites that paid spammers for referrals.
The same spammer was found guilty of violating the CAN-SPAM act and was ordered to pay $230 million for spamming and phishing on MySpace. The spam led to gambling, ringtone and pornography sites.
Facebook may choose to close the file once the default judgment is entered against the spammer, the court filing said.
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Why Disaster Recovery Plans Fail
August 8th, 2011
Because of their complexity and lack of standardization, traditional disaster recovery infrastructures often fail to meet enterprise requirements for recovery speed and integrity at a reasonable cost.
Downtime, whether planned or unplanned, often translates into lost opportunities and increased costsand for many enterprises today, any amount of downtime is unacceptable. Having an effective recovery strategy and a set of coherent disaster recovery plans is essential to helping avoid downtime during a crisis.
The need for enhanced quality, efficiency, and predictability for disaster recovery and business continuity has increased significantly, highlighting the necessity of a well-defined set of recovery plans and regular testing. However, as the required scope of critical processes, production applications, and enterprise demands increases, sustaining the timeliness and effectiveness of a recovery plan can become increasingly difficult. For most organizations, disaster recovery is extremely labor intensive, often requiring the manual coordination of hundreds of recovery tasks. So although the importance of having an effective disaster recovery plan is clear, organizations often find it difficult to achieve the level of protection they need.
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Disaster recovery plans suffer in recession
July 29th, 2011
According to a HP survey of IT managers at small businesses across the United States, 93 percent of companies have placed cost concerns over the best IT solutions, leading 89 percent of those companies to experience IT-related problems.
The study found that the top three IT problems reported by cost-conscious companies are low-performing hardware (46 percent), out-of-date hardware (37 percent) and unreliable hardware (23 percent), leading to suboptimal computing efficiency and an overall loss of productivity.
The survey also revealed that 54 percent of small businesses cite summer as the peak season for working remotely. With 58 percent of IT managers stating that they have not invested in network security this year, companies will find they are adding pressure and potentially greater security risks to their already stressed IT networks.
The survey was conducted among 500 IT managers at small businesses, between May 31 and June 6, 2011, using an email invitation and an online survey.
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