Digital Safety Procedural Policy
What is it?
The Digital Safety Policy template is a free tool for small and mid-size organizations to support them in protecting their various digital assets (website, social media, personal information of staff, etc.) from bad actors. This template provides a customizable guide of recommended steps to prevent negative cyber events as well as to mitigate the effects during and after an attack. It can serve as a reference document to revisit whenever you’re uncertain about how to manage a digital space. This is a ‘living document,’ which means it should be a flexible guide that will change as the organization grows and adapts.
Who is it for?
Ideally, the policy should be customized to each organization and should be implemented at the beginning of the onboarding process with any new (in addition to current) employees and volunteers. This policy can apply to everyone who works at the organization—employees, contractors, volunteers, and any outside partners who use your digital tools, data, or online platforms. It covers all devices, networks, software, and systems the organization owns or operates.
Some notes on how to use the Digital Safety Procedural Policy:
- This is meant to be a living document both at your own organization and in its home at ODLAN. We will be making updates to the template regularly to reflect new insights, best practices, and community feedback.
- We recommend you download the document off Google Drive so as to customize your own copy of the procedural policy for your organization.
- A yellow highlight indicates a space where the document should be edited to be customized to best suit your organization
- While we believe this document should be shared and reviewed with everyone at the organization, it may be most practical for those in the roles of Executive Director, Human Resources, and employees working in Tech & IT roles to work collaboratively to customize the policy at the outset of implementation.
- This policy document is quite detailed and may feel overwhelming at first. We recommend reading it in full before making any customizations to ensure a clear understanding of its contents.
Some of the topics covered in the Digital Safety Procedural Policy include:
- What to do/steps to take if your social media, website, or other digital space is hacked by bad actors
- A list of secure digital platform & tool recommendations
- Self-care recommendations after doxxing
- Digital accounts tracking
- Social media dogpiling
- Incident response strategy for email accounts receiving hate mails
- How to change your social media settings to better protect your organization and your staff. This includes:
- How to filter out offensive words & phrases
- How to protect your IP address
- Managing profile visibility
Looking for support in customizing and implementing the policy at your organization? Reach out to us at [email protected].