S 2.111 Keeping manuals at hand

Initiation responsibility: IT Security Officer, Head of IT

Implementation responsibility: Head of IT, IT Security Officer

When procuring information technology - regardless of whether it is hardware or software - the related manuals and technical reference literature must also be procured in sufficient numbers.

In an increasing number of cases, physical documentation related to IT products now only consists of an installation guide and introductory text, the rest being replaced by online help systems. The scope of this documentation proves inadequate and limited, particularly on the occurrence of errors which need to be evaluated. Steps must be taken to ensure that the required manuals, technical reference literature and error catalogues are procured with the IT system. In this context, it is not necessary to refer exclusively to literature provided by the manufacturer of the IT system.

All manuals concerning an IT product must remain available at all times in the application's environment. For example, manuals concerning a server operating system must be stored in the immediate vicinity of the server, not in a library which might be locked. Access to this literature must be ensured as part of contingency planning (see S 6.3 Development of an Emergency Procedure Manual).

Review questions:

• Is the required documentation available for all IT components?