Hi AO!

I need a little bit of advice. Hopefully this is in the right forum.. not too sure if you would call this a security post or not...

Recently, I have found a couple of weak points in our network and policies that I would like to strengthen.

These weak points are not directly security vulnerabilities, but more policy and implementation. Some of them include things such as patch management and deployment, certain policies and etc that could use a little attention.

Seeing that I am low man in the chain here... I have little authority to just start working on these things without permission or authorization. I need to write up a couple of proposals to get authorization to attend to such matters. I have brought some of these matters to managements' attention over informal meetings... but I seem to get the cold shoulder.

My education thus far has been geared mostly towards the technical aspect of IT.
Therefore, I have no experience in writing and submitting proposals. I have not had a need for it in the past. In my current college program, we don’t cover management duties. We just focus on the technical aspects of IT. The management aspect is a different degree and I plan on getting that after I finish my technical degree. One step at a time…

I know we have several people here on AO that do this on a regular basis and I would like to find some examples. Do any of you have any templates that you use for a project proposal that you would be kind enough to share with me? I will only use them for reference.

I have found a couple of websites that have some examples, but they are not related to IT. I would like to show the pros/cons of how things currently are and the pros/cons of how I want them to be. I want to give info on why it is an important project, what benefits, how much time and money it can save us or cost us, risk, etc.

I have been researching these projects and know what I want to say… it’s just how do I say it?

If you prefer to converse via PM, I would be happy to do so.
Thanks in advance for any reference/resouces you can provide.