In This Issue
- Hiring Best Practices
- Data breach notification processes are costly
- Security Policies and Procedures
Hiring Best Practices Defined
Many hiring managers hire candidates that interview the best versus those who will perform better. The question is why.
Many CIOs believe they are not hiring the right candidate as often as they can. The reasons are complicated, but the reality is the same for almost every company. The hiring process is more art than science, more gut feel than database. Hiring managers bad at digging in with candidates to really determine if they can be successful in the job that they are trying to fill.
As a result, we subconsciously overvalue such things as attractiveness and smooth talking skills in the hiring process. Many CIOs agree that your company's hiring skill is limited by the following realities:
- Hiring managers all think their hiring instincts are great, even when they're not. Hiring managers who have more than a year or two of experience in hiring often become so comfortable with their conversational style of interviewing that they actually think theyre good at it.
- Your human-resources and recruiting teams don't know the jobs being filled like the hiring managers do. Nor should they. There might be 63 open positions in IT; it stands to reason that a hiring manager should know more about a single open position than a recruiter. As a result, the HR team defers to the autonomy of the hiring manager, which means hiring mistakes happen more often than they have to.
- Attractive people are easy to hire. Science says we attribute a higher level of professional competence to attractive people in a subconscious way. Why grill attractive candidates in the interview process? Just look at them - it's obvious they can do the job!
- Attractive people who are also strong communicators are almost impossible for average hiring managers to decline. Without question, higher-than-average attractiveness plus slick talking skills equals bad hires over time.
To fight the natural instinct of your hiring managers to hire the best-looking/-sounding candidate versus the be best performers, you can alter the outcome by following these best practices:
- Teach your hiring managers to really delve deeply into candidates during interviews in an attempt to get to what's real. Regardless of the system you use, this involves training hiring managers to be unwilling to accept hypothetical answers from candidates. Good matches for this goal are systems like behavioral interviewing and top grading.
- Make consensus in the hiring process harder to reach for the hiring manager. If you're less than confident in your ability to make your hiring managers great interviewers, a typical hedge is to make sure they have to build consensus with other interviewers regarding who the best candidate is. Some firms do this effectively with group interviews; some simply force individual interviewers of the same candidate to compare notes extensively. One thing is sure: force conversation and fewer mistakes occur.
- Conduct six month reviews of new hires' performance and rank your more successful hiring managers based on candidates performance. Rank you hiring managers based on successes.
Apply these best practices to your hiring process and over time you'll end up with fewer misses and a higher overall quality of hire.
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Data Breach Notification Processes Are Costly
The needs for regulatory compliance requirements have not slowed down...
California passes a new data breach notification law
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 those whose information is compromised must be notified. Most organizations now pay for credit monitoring services for several years for all those impacted by a breach these services typically cost about $100 per person per year. And in some cases, organizations are 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 Governer Jerry Brown and will take effect on Jan. 1, 2012.
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."
Detailed and Customizable for Your Business
The IT Security Manual Template provides all the essential sections of a complete security manual and walks you through the creation of each step. Detailed language addressing a variety of topics is included in a 230-page Microsoft Word document which you can modify as much or as little as you need to fit your business requirements. This instant download includes sections on critical topics like:
- Risk analysis
- Staff member roles
- Physical security
- Facility design, construction and operations
- Media and documentation
- Data and software security
- Network security
- Internet and IT contingency planning
- Insurance
- Outsourced services
- Waiver procedures
- Incident reporting procedures
- Access control guidelines
Includes Supplemental Assessment Material
To help you assess factors affecting your IT security, the IT Security Manual Template comes with the Business & IT Impact Questionnaire, a Word document that helps you gather essential security-related information from across your organization. You'll also receive the Threat & Vulnerability Assessment Tool, a Microsoft Excel workbook you can use to define and compare dangers that could impair your business operations.
Comes in Standard - Premium - Gold Editions
Not only can you get the template in easily modifiable Microsoft WORD but you can get full multi-page job descriptions when you order the Premium or Gold Editions. Read on...