What should an information security policy contain?

A statement of scope and objectives, the roles responsible for security, the rules that apply to everyone, and a reference to the supporting policies that go into detail. It should also name an approver, carry an effective date and say how often it is reviewed. Anything longer than a few pages usually belongs in a supporting policy instead.

How many security policies does a small company need?

Fewer than most template packs imply, but more than one. The set here is 22 documents because separating them by owner and review cadence is easier to maintain than a single long document. A five-person company can adopt all of them and keep several very short.

Are these templates free?

Yes. The 22 templates are Apache-2.0 licensed and you can generate the whole set, edited for your company, without signing up or giving an email address. The paid Audit Kit is optional: it rewrites the policies around the specific tools you use and produces Word documents, a criteria crosswalk and a review calendar.

Can I just copy a security policy template and be done?

Not safely. A policy that describes controls you do not operate is worse than no policy, because it is a written statement that does not match reality. Change the owners, the cadences and the tool names to what you actually do, and delete the sections that do not apply.

Do these templates work for SOC 2?

They are written for it: the set maps to the Trust Services Criteria, and each criterion has a page showing which policies address it and what evidence an auditor typically samples. Policies are only part of an examination, though. The controls they describe have to operate and be evidenced over the period.

Who should own each policy?

Someone who can actually make the decision it describes. In practice that means a security owner for governance, access and data policies, an engineering lead for change, development, logging and infrastructure, and an operations or people lead for devices, physical security and HR. The templates come with a suggested owner per policy, which you change to a real name.

Security policy templates

A complete information security policy set: 22 editable templates with owners, review cadences and the tools you actually use. Free to generate and Apache-2.0 licensed, whether or not you are working towards SOC 2.

One policy, or a set?

Most companies start with a single document called the information security policy, and most auditors, customers and insurers eventually ask for more than that. The workable shape is a short top-level policy that states the scope, the objectives and who is accountable, with supporting policies underneath it that go into detail on access, data, engineering and the rest.

Splitting them is not bureaucracy for its own sake. Each policy ends up with a different owner and a different review rhythm: the engineering lead maintains change management, the person who runs laptops maintains endpoint security. One 40-page document has one owner, which in practice means it has none.

The 22 policies

Every policy below is a real template on this site. Follow any of them to read the full text before you generate your own copy.

Governance

The policy that sets scope and authority, and the rules that apply to everyone.

Policy	What it covers	Typical owner
Information Security Policy	The top-level policy: scope, objectives, roles, and the authority the rest of the set hangs from	Security Owner
Acceptable Use Policy	What staff may and may not do with company systems, accounts and data	Security Owner
Risk Assessment and Management Policy	How risks are identified, scored, assigned an owner and treated	Security Owner

Access and identity

Who can reach what, proven by approvals and reviews rather than by memory.

Policy	What it covers	Typical owner
Access Control Policy	Who gets access to what, how it is approved, and how it is reviewed and removed	Security Owner
Authentication and Password Policy	Password rules, MFA, and how credentials and keys are issued and stored	Security Owner
Asset Management Policy	The inventory of laptops, servers and services, and who is responsible for each	IT/Operations Lead

Data

Classification, retention, encryption and privacy: the rules that follow the data itself.

Policy	What it covers	Typical owner
Data Classification and Handling Policy	The classification levels and the handling rules that follow from each one	Security Owner
Data Retention and Disposal Policy	How long each kind of data is kept, and how it is deleted when the time is up	Security Owner
Encryption and Key Management Policy	Encryption in transit and at rest, and how keys are managed and rotated	Engineering Lead
Privacy and Data Protection Policy	How personal data is handled, and the commitments made to the people it belongs to	Security Owner

Engineering

How software reaches production and how weaknesses are found and fixed.

Policy	What it covers	Typical owner
Change Management Policy	How changes to systems are requested, reviewed, approved and released	Engineering Lead
Secure Software Development Policy	Secure development: code review, testing, dependencies and environment separation	Engineering Lead
Vulnerability and Patch Management Policy	Scanning for vulnerabilities and the deadlines for fixing what is found	Engineering Lead
Logging and Monitoring Policy	What gets logged, how long logs are kept, and which events raise an alert	Engineering Lead

Resilience

What happens when something breaks, and how you get back.

Policy	What it covers	Typical owner
Incident Response Policy	How an incident is declared, who is called, and what is recorded afterwards	Security Owner
Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Policy	Recovery objectives and the plan for continuing to operate through a disruption	Engineering Lead
Backup and Recovery Policy	Backup schedule, retention and encryption, and how restores are tested	Engineering Lead

People, devices and suppliers

The controls that live outside the codebase and are the easiest to forget.

Policy	What it covers	Typical owner
Vendor and Third-Party Risk Management Policy	Assessing vendors before they get data, and reviewing the important ones each year	Security Owner
Human Resources Security Policy	Screening, onboarding, training, acknowledgment and offboarding of people	People/HR Lead
Endpoint and Workstation Security Policy	Laptop and workstation controls: encryption, screen lock, updates and management	IT/Operations Lead
Network and Infrastructure Security Policy	Network boundaries, firewall rules, segmentation and remote access	Engineering Lead
Physical and Remote Work Security Policy	Physical security for offices and equipment, and the rules for working remotely	IT/Operations Lead

What separates a usable template from a useless one

The difference is not length or how formal the language sounds. It is whether the document describes something that happens. Five things make that difference in practice:

A named owner per policy, meaning a person or a role that exists at your company, not “the Information Security Committee” at a company of eight people.
Real cadences. If the policy says access is reviewed quarterly, that review has to happen four times a year and leave a record. Pick the slowest cadence you will genuinely keep.
The tools you actually use, named. A policy that says “the identity provider” is vague; one that says Google Workspace, with MFA enforced, is testable.
An approval and a date, plus a revision history that gains a row every time the policy is reviewed, even when nothing changed.
Acknowledgment records showing that the people bound by the policy have read it.

A template that arrives with bracketed placeholders is doing you a favour by making the gaps visible. The risk is the opposite kind: a polished document full of controls that sound plausible and that nobody at your company performs. That is a written statement contradicted by your own evidence, which is worse than having written nothing.

What to change before you adopt one

Work through the set once with this in mind: replace every role with a person, every frequency with one you will keep, and every generic tool reference with the product you pay for. Delete whole sections that do not apply, for example physical data centre controls if you are entirely on a cloud provider, and say in one line why they do not apply rather than leaving them silently missing.

Then get it approved and acknowledged. An unapproved policy is a draft, and a policy nobody has acknowledged is a document rather than a rule. The acknowledgment guide covers how to collect and keep those records.

If you are heading for SOC 2

The same set is what a SOC 2 examination asks you to produce, which is why each policy on this site is mapped to the Trust Services Criteria it addresses. Two things are worth knowing early: there is no official list of SOC 2 controls, so you write your own and map them to the criteria (see the controls list guide), and policies alone are not enough, because the auditor tests whether the controls described actually operated during the period. For the order in which to adopt them, see SOC 2 policies for startups; for the full index with the criteria mapping, see the template index.

Frequently asked questions

What should an information security policy contain?: A statement of scope and objectives, the roles responsible for security, the rules that apply to everyone, and a reference to the supporting policies that go into detail. It should also name an approver, carry an effective date and say how often it is reviewed. Anything longer than a few pages usually belongs in a supporting policy instead.
How many security policies does a small company need?: Fewer than most template packs imply, but more than one. The set here is 22 documents because separating them by owner and review cadence is easier to maintain than a single long document. A five-person company can adopt all of them and keep several very short.
Are these templates free?: Yes. The 22 templates are Apache-2.0 licensed and you can generate the whole set, edited for your company, without signing up or giving an email address. The paid Audit Kit is optional: it rewrites the policies around the specific tools you use and produces Word documents, a criteria crosswalk and a review calendar.
Can I just copy a security policy template and be done?: Not safely. A policy that describes controls you do not operate is worse than no policy, because it is a written statement that does not match reality. Change the owners, the cadences and the tool names to what you actually do, and delete the sections that do not apply.
Do these templates work for SOC 2?: They are written for it: the set maps to the Trust Services Criteria, and each criterion has a page showing which policies address it and what evidence an auditor typically samples. Policies are only part of an examination, though. The controls they describe have to operate and be evidenced over the period.
Who should own each policy?: Someone who can actually make the decision it describes. In practice that means a security owner for governance, access and data policies, an engineering lead for change, development, logging and infrastructure, and an operations or people lead for devices, physical security and HR. The templates come with a suggested owner per policy, which you change to a real name.

Policyseed provides governance policy templates and AI tailoring. It is not legal advice and not a compliance guarantee. Management adopts the policies; the CPA firm performs the SOC 2 examination.