Company Culture + IT Security?
Have you considered IT Security?
When you identified and articulated your organisational culture– way back when – did your IT Security come into the mix? Did you think about the security of your data, your employee’s data, the data you would collect from and hold for your clients? Was the way that your employees behaved online a consideration?
Company Culture
Your company culture was most likely something that you talked about. Your culture will have been informed by your values, practices, and beliefs and subsequently introduced to all your employees and new hires. In many organisations, the culture is the magic ingredient. Together with the values they offer the guidelines and blueprint for expected behaviour, how we treat each other, our company property and many companies invest considerably in creating and nurturing this. It makes sense therefore that our culture, values, and beliefs also inform our group attitude to online behaviour, security and treatment of Intellectual Property.
When the team at Intuity first began our ISO journey in 2011 the group working on the project was small and their challenge great. Over the years, to maintain our certification and develop our scope beyond ice cube to tec support, we encouraged involvement from the wider team. We recognised as outlined in last weeks’ column that regardless of our role in the company – we all now work in IT!
This has resulted in a shift in online behaviour internally which echoes three of our core values: Honesty, Reliability, and Togetherness.
Now with the team “buying in” to ISO there is a collective consistency in our online behaviour and attitudes and procedures around data security, cybersecurity and IP which falls in-line with our overall culture as an organisation – not to mention heightening the levels of IT security for the organisation.
Why is it important?
If your IT security and the online behaviour of your employees was not a factor in this important part of your corporate journey – then it might be time to pause and think, imagine if your organisation’s attitude to security had a direct impact on its ability to withstand cyber-attacks? Think about the potential for an employees’ online behaviour to impact (negatively) on the organisation and their colleagues – your employees. Perhaps articulating a widespread common code of behaviour for the good is worth considering?
Why not ask yourself the following questions and see where they bring you:
As an organisation, do we:
- Consider our employee behaviour as having a potential impact on us?
- Recognise that behaviour nowadays spans beyond the immediate and into cyber perpetuity?
- Want to influence the behaviour of our employees online?
- See the benefit of having an IT Security savvy workforce?
- Have an idea of how an IT Security breach might affect us as an organisation?
- Possess the skills to deal with a cyber- attack in house should it happen?
- Have the correct procedure in place for our team to follow in the event of an attack?
- Ask that our team adhere to a company social media policy?
- Have “buy in” from our senior team leaders on the importance of IT Security for your culture?
- Possess a Social Media Policy?
Answering these questions may have clarified for you where IT Security sits within your organisation and particularly in relation to your organisational culture. We can help you with this.
To take it to the next level:
1. Consider introducing a social media policy for staff.
2. Provide Security Awareness Training for your team and reduce your overall risk of cyber-attack by up to 50%.
3. Put clear IT Security policies and procedures in place.
4. Call us today on 0818 987 900 and the team will be happy to help.