Governance Roles and Responsibilities Policy - SME

The Governance Roles & Responsibilities Policy (P02S) delivers a streamlined approach for assigning, documenting, and overseeing information security responsibilities within a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME). Crafted specifically for environments where a General Manager or Business Owner may directly oversee security tasks, often without a dedicated IT or SOC team, this SME policy ensures organizations remain compliant with globally recognized standards, including ISO/IEC 27001:2022, ISO/IEC 27002:2022, and GDPR. Purposefully, the policy sets forth how governance responsibilities for information security are assigned, delegated, and managed throughout the organization. Its aim is to guarantee accountability at every operational level, supporting operational effectiveness through transparent identification of those responsible for various security-critical functions, such as policy management, access and change approvals, incident handling, and monitoring. The policy recognizes the resource constraints common in SMEs, allowing for streamlined role assignment, often with the General Manager assuming several key oversight duties. If a Designated Security Coordinator is in place (either a staff member or a trusted consultant), their duties, authority, and reporting lines are clearly delineated. For many SMEs, the General Manager remains accountable for all outcomes, even when responsibilities are delegated or contracted to external IT service providers. Scope-wise, the policy is broadly applicable to anyone handling organizational data or accessing systems: business owners, staff, contractors, and external IT service providers or consultants. Coverage spans all relevant systems, environments, and services (office IT, cloud, physical records, remote devices), ensuring that both internal and outsourced security activities are governed. Critical to SME practicality, delegation requirements must be simple yet secure: written documentation of assignments, restrictions to prevent unauthorized self-approval, and preservation of management oversight throughout. To support compliance and audit readiness, the policy requires all security roles and duties to be recorded, routinely reviewed, and communicated to role holders. A simple responsibilities register, maintained by the General Manager, forms the backbone for this documentation. Annual reviews of access and assignments, compliance checklists, and regular rebriefs of staff ensure that the organization remains both secure and audit-ready, even in rapidly changing or resource-limited contexts. The policy emphasizes that exceptions must be formally justified, documented, time-limited, and reassessed regularly. Providers are contractually required to abide by the policy, with enforcement and escalation procedures in case of non-conformity. Policy updates, whether driven by regulatory changes or operational incidents, must be promptly shared with all stakeholders through defined communication channels. As an SME-specific document (denoted by 'S' in its document number and references to the General Manager role in place of CISO or IT director), it is tailored to organizations without full-time IT or security managers but demands rigor equal to large enterprise policies. The P02S policy thus provides peace of mind and compliance for SMEs striving to meet demanding standards using lean teams and clear, pragmatic processes.