What do you do if your network security policies and procedures are outdated or incomplete?

1 Assess your current state

The first step to ensure your network security is to assess your current policies and procedures. This assessment can be done by reviewing existing documents and comparing them with industry standards and frameworks, such as NIST, ISO, or CIS. Additionally, interviews and surveys with your network security team, stakeholders, and users can help you understand their roles, responsibilities, and expectations. Moreover, audits and tests can evaluate your network security controls, vulnerabilities, and compliance levels. Finally, analyzing your network security incidents, logs, and reports can identify gaps, weaknesses, and trends.

2 Prioritize your actions

The next step is to prioritize your actions based on the results of your assessment. You need to decide which issues are the most critical and urgent, and which solutions are the most beneficial and feasible. To do this, you can use various criteria and methods, such as aligning your network security goals with your business strategy, evaluating the impact and likelihood of different risks and threats, estimating the costs and benefits of different options, and applying the Pareto principle or 80/20 rule to focus on the most important and effective actions.

3 Update and document your policies and procedures

The third step is to update and document your network security policies and procedures according to your priorities. To ensure that your policies and procedures are clear, consistent, and comprehensive, you should align them with the latest standards, regulations, and best practices. Additionally, you can use various tips and techniques to make the update process easier. For instance, you can use a template or format that is easy to follow and understand; simple and concise language without jargon or ambiguity; examples and scenarios to illustrate your policies; diagrams and charts to visualize them; and

tags to highlight commands, configurations, and scripts.
###### Communicate and train your staff
The fourth step is to communicate and train your staff on your updated network security policies and procedures. It is imperative that your staff are aware of and understand the policies and procedures, as well as have the skills and knowledge to abide by them. You can employ various channels and methods to communicate and train staff, such as sending emails or newsletters to announce the policies, holding meetings or webinars to discuss them, creating manuals or videos to provide instructions, and providing quizzes or tests to assess their learning and compliance.
###### Monitor and review your policies and procedures
The fifth step is to monitor and review your policies and procedures on a regular basis. It is essential to make sure that your policies and procedures are effective, efficient, adaptable, and flexible to changing conditions and requirements. To do this, you can use various tools and metrics such as dashboards, reports, alerts, feedback surveys, reviews, audits, inspections, evaluations, benchmarks, standards, or best practices. These will help you track and measure your network security performance and compliance, collect staff's opinions and suggestions on your policies and procedures, verify and validate your network security controls and outcomes, as well as compare and improve your network security policies and procedures.
######Here’s what else to consider
This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?