IT dominates compliance thoughts

The challenge of meeting the requirements of IT-related legislation is dominating the to-do lists of compliance managers, new research has claimed.

A report from corporate compliance firm PolicyMatter puts data protection, IT security, internet and email at the top of the list of 'must-do policies'.

The firm said it had deliberately targeted an equal mix of IT, HR, legal and management professionals across different industry sectors in order to get as balanced a view as possible.

"Yet with a total of 42 per cent, the focus on IT policies clearly extends beyond the IT department," said Matt Fisher, spokesman at PolicyMatter.

"The results show that as well as investing in technical security measures such as email filtering solutions and firewalls, organisations are realising that employee behaviour is critical to complying with legislation."

But the research found that 68 per cent of respondents could not say for sure that all employees had seen their company's IT security policy, and only 15 per cent recorded the acceptance of policies by staff.

Nathan Millard, of law firm Morgan Cole, added: "Having a legally watertight policy is a critical first step to policy best practice.

"But all the effort that goes into the research and drafting is wasted if the policy is just posted to an intranet site and left there to age."