Comments on: IT Policies http://www.churchtechy.com/2008/06/it-policies/ where Tech meets church Tue, 31 Jan 2012 17:17:56 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= By: CTadminhttp://www.churchtechy.com/2008/06/it-policies/comment-page-1/#comment-6 CTadmin Sat, 21 Jun 2008 16:01:19 +0000 http://churchtechy.com/?p=15#comment-6 Thanks Barry - I really appreciate the comment and yes I agree, we do need to use and enforce best practices. As to the domain name, I was blessed! Thanks Barry – I really appreciate the comment and yes I agree, we do need to use and enforce best practices.

As to the domain name, I was blessed!

]]> By: Barry Buchananhttp://www.churchtechy.com/2008/06/it-policies/comment-page-1/#comment-5 Barry Buchanan Sat, 21 Jun 2008 03:07:07 +0000 http://churchtechy.com/?p=15#comment-5 First good work on the site, love the domain name. You hit upon my biggest single annoyance with my job at a large church in N. Texas. It is a fine balance between being "big brother" and doing the right thing. The first and biggets reason for policies is security. A careless user who leaves a system unlocked could reveal salary information, donation information, or may confidential issues. The user may not even have direct access but a clever person may be able to elevate priviledges. So at the very least password and screen saver plocies must be enforced. We have many ways to enforce policies. We use group policy a lot. The main thing is to have written policies for users to sign, it can even be a simple document and it will be ever changing. Inconvience to the user can not be an excuse for not usng "best practices". However making ploicies you can't enforce is bascially useless. My main montra over the years has been, if you want a professional perfoming network you must you industry standards. As Christains we must be accountable form the way we drive to the way we are stewards with God's resources. One of our best succeses was with coming up with standards for the printers. We got rid of most of the personal printers and went with bigger network printers. We met much resistance but a year later not only did we add functionality we saved over 30% in cost. Adding codes kept wasted printing down and our per print cost went down. Good luck with all of this. Sometime if you are interested I can share some scary examples of church IT gone wrong. First good work on the site, love the domain name.
You hit upon my biggest single annoyance with my job at a large church in N. Texas. It is a fine balance between being “big brother” and doing the right thing. The first and biggets reason for policies is security. A careless user who leaves a system unlocked could reveal salary information, donation information, or may confidential issues. The user may not even have direct access but a clever person may be able to elevate priviledges. So at the very least password and screen saver plocies must be enforced.
We have many ways to enforce policies. We use group policy a lot. The main thing is to have written policies for users to sign, it can even be a simple document and it will be ever changing. Inconvience to the user can not be an excuse for not usng “best practices”. However making ploicies you can’t enforce is bascially useless. My main montra over the years has been, if you want a professional perfoming network you must you industry standards. As Christains we must be accountable form the way we drive to the way we are stewards with God’s resources.
One of our best succeses was with coming up with standards for the printers. We got rid of most of the personal printers and went with bigger network printers. We met much resistance but a year later not only did we add functionality we saved over 30% in cost. Adding codes kept wasted printing down and our per print cost went down.
Good luck with all of this. Sometime if you are interested I can share some scary examples of church IT gone wrong.

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