Policies & Standards

Security policies are part of a logical abstraction of an Enterprise Security Architecture. They are derived from risk-based business requirements and exist at a number of different levels including Information Security policy, Physical Security Policy, Business Continuity Policy, Infrastructure Security Policies, Application Security Policies as well as the over-arching Business Operational Risk Management Policy. Security Policies are statements that capture requirements specifying what type of security and how much should be applied to protect the business. Policies typically state what should be done while avoiding reference to particular technical solutions. Security Standards are an abstraction at the component level and are needed to ensure that the many different components can be integrated into systems. There are multiple internationally recognized standards for various aspects of security from standards bodies such as ISO, IETF, IEEE, ISACA, OASIS, and TCG. Direction can also be provided in the form of operational security baselines, job aid guidelines, best practices, correlation of regulatory requirements, and role based awareness. One way to approach security policy and its implementation is to classify information and associate policies with the resulting classes of data.