Lara Ramey
Southern New Hampshire University
OL 442 – Professor David Miller
April 25, 2015
Final Paper: Data Security

With technology taking over businesses and costs rising higher by the year, having a solid data security policy in place is an extremely beneficial and important part of protecting an organization. Sinrod (2010) discusses how financially damaging data breaches can be for an organization, with an average cost of $6.75 million per incident in 2009.
Breaches can be expressed both in and out of the organization, with especially staggering statistics on employee theft. Dwyer (2014) states, “39 percent of data theft from businesses comes from company insiders. Even more troublesome, 59 percent of ex-employees admit they stole data from their former employers.” With figures as high as these, it is up to company executives and management personnel to apply great effort in creating data security plans that cover all aspects of potential threats in order to keep incidents and costs low.
Human Resources must also have a role in designing and implementing these policies, as well as conveying them appropriately to both managers and employees. Jackson et al. (2014) proposes developing an ethics code for the entire company to follow and stressing the importance of managers to “practice what they preach.” If the organization follows its own protocols and demonstrates ethical behavior, it is more likely their employees will follow suit.
Before the policy is communicated to employees, it must be written and shared among executives and top team members. According to Bayuk (2009), the policy should incorporate aspects that are company-specific: “...in order to compose an information security policy document, an organization has to have well-defined objectives for security and an agreed-upon management strategy for securing information.” Once the policy has