Recruitment and Termination Procedures

Appropriate recruitment procedures can prevent the hiring of people who are likely to violate security policies. A thorough background investigation should be conducted, including checking on the applicant’s criminal history and references. Although this does not necessarily screen individuals for honesty and integrity, it can help identify areas that should be investigated further.

Three types of references should be obtained: (1) employment, (2) character, and (3) credit. Employment references can help estimate an individual’s competence to perform, or be trained to perform, the tasks required on the job. Character references can help determine such qualities as trustworthiness, reliability, and ability to get along with others. Credit references can indicate a person’s financial habits, which in turn can be an indication of maturity and willingness to assume responsibility for one’s own actions.

In addition, certain procedures should be followed when any employee leaves the company, regardless of the conditions of termination. Any employee being involuntarily terminated should be asked to leave the premises immediately upon notification, to prevent further access to computing resources. Voluntary terminations may be handled differently, depending on the judgment of the employee’s supervisors, to enable the employee to complete work in process or train a replacement.

All authorizations that have been granted to an employee should be revoked upon departure. If the departing employee has the authority to grant authorizations to others, these other authorizations should also be reviewed. All keys, badges, and other devices used to gain access to premises, information, or equipment should be retrieved from the departing employee. The combinations of all locks known to a departing employee should be changed immediately. In addition, the employee’s log-on IDs and passwords should be canceled, and the related active and backup files should be either deleted or reassigned to a replacement employee.

Any special conditions to the termination (e.g., denial of the right to use certain information) should be reviewed with the departing employee; in addition, a document stating these conditions should be signed by the employee. All terminations should be routed through the computer security representative for the facility where the terminated employee works to ensure that all information system access authority has been revoked.

Security Policies and Procedures

Appropriate policies and procedures are key to the establishment of an effective information security program. Policies and procedures should reflect the general policies of the organization as regards the protection of information and computing resources. Policies should cover the use of computing resources, marking of sensitive information, movement of computing resources outside the facility, introduction of personal computing equipment and media into the facility, disposal of sensitive waste, and computer and data security incident reporting. Enforcement of these policies is essential to their effectiveness.

Supervision

Often, an alert supervisor is the first person to notice a change in an employee’s attitude. Early signs of job dissatisfaction or personal distress should prompt supervisors to consider subtly moving the employee out of a critical or sensitive position.

Supervisors must be thoroughly familiar with the policies and procedures related to the responsibilities of their department. Supervisors should require that their staff members comply with pertinent policies and procedures and should observe the effectiveness of these guidelines. If the objectives of the policies and procedures can be accomplished more effectively, the supervisor should recommend appropriate improvements. Job assignments should be reviewed regularly to ensure that an appropriate separation of duties is maintained, that employees in sensitive positions are occasionally removed from a complete processing cycle without prior announcement, and that critical or sensitive jobs are rotated periodically among qualified personnel.

Disaster Recovery, Contingency, and Emergency Plans

The disaster recovery plan is a document containing procedures for emergency response, extended backup operations, and recovery should a computer installation experience a partial or total loss of computing resources or physical facilities (or of access to such facilities). The primary objective of this plan, used in conjunction with the contingency plans, is to provide reasonable assurance that a computing installation can recover from disasters, continue to process critical applications in a degraded mode, and return to a normal mode of operation within a reasonable time. A key part of disaster recovery planning is to provide for processing at an alternative site during the time that the original facility is unavailable.

Contingency and emergency plans establish recovery procedures that address specific threats. These plans help prevent minor incidents from escalating into disasters. For example, a contingency plan might provide a set of procedures that defines the condition and response required to return a computing capability to nominal operation; an emergency plan might be a specific procedure for shutting down equipment in the event of a fire or for evacuating a facility in the event of an earthquake.

User Registration for Computer Access

Formal user registration ensures that all users are properly authorized for system and service access. In addition, it provides the opportunity to acquaint users with their responsibilities for the security of computing resources and to obtain their agreement to comply with related policies and procedures.