Enterprise Information Security Policies, Standards, and Procedures

Abstract

This chapter explores enterprise information security policies, standards, and procedures. It examines the existing resources, analyses the available options, and offers recommendations to the CIOs and other people that have to make decisions about policies, standards, and procedures to ensure information security in their enterprise. Additionally, the need, requirements, and audience for different types of security documents are scrutinized. Their mutual relationship is examined, and the association among them is illustrated with a diagram supplemented by an example to bring about better comprehension of these documents. It is important to know the sources and organizations that make standards and guidelines. Therefore, the major ones are discussed. This research involved finding all of the relevant documents and analyzing the reasons for the ever-increasing number of newer ones and the revisions of the existing ones. Various well-known and established international, as well as national, information security standards and guidelines are listed to provide a pertinent collection from which to choose. The distinguishing factors and common attributes are researched to make it easier to classify these documents. Finally, the crux of the chapter involves recommending appropriate information security standards and guidelines based on the sector to which an organization belongs. An analysis of the role played by these standards and guidelines in the effectiveness of information security is also discussed, along with some caveats. It is important for practitioners and researchers to know what is available, who the key players are, and the potential issues with information security standards and guidelines; they are all concisely presented in this chapter.