ISO27001 Why you should care.

What? An (the) international standard for Information Security Derived from BS7799 Very comprehensive, very large – ISO27001 is the standard – ISO27002 is the code of practice i.e. what is implemented

Why Cynical reasons: – Funders are asking for it – Auditors require more documents – Data loss: HMRC, UEA – General security: Exeter Good reasons – If we take it seriously, forces improvement – Provides evidence of best practice

Sample Contract Examples from NatCen contract

What’s the plan Follow in outline the UCISA toolkit Deviate where sensible Keep impact on departments that do not handle sensitive data to a minimum

What are we doing? Project sponsored by ISG Headed by KMH Members: – AJC, Records Manager, Research Office, representatives of academic departments.

When “In compliance with” – Oct 2010 Certified – no plans

IT Security Structure ISO27001 requires senior level buy in Stephen Towne to be responsible for security Day-to-day work delegated Committee to report to ISG - an Information Security Advisory Committee (ISAC)

UCISA Suggested Sections 16 sections including: – Personnel – BC/DR – Compliance – Outsourcing – Operations – System and network planning and management – User management – Use of Computers, mobile working

Details Some sections will not affect departments directly e.g. HR will handle all personnel issues Departments that don’t run their own systems will only be affected at the user level (e.g. disk encryption) Departments that run their own systems and handle sensitive data have some work to do

Department A Doesn’t handle any sensitive data Doesn’t run own services Carry on as before. No work

Department B Handles sensitive data e.g. Health data Must comply with funders requirements Likely to include: – Data encryption – Data auditing – ISO27001 compliance May be a lot of work, depending on what you are doing now

Department C Handles no sensitive data but runs own services e.g. Likely to have to do some work as part of University’s BC planning

Example Business Continuity – ISO27001 specifies that a BC plan must exist for critical systems – Means you must identify “critical systems”! – It doesn’t mean you have to have full redundancy – OK to say “this system can be down for two weeks while we restore from backups” – BUT….. This must true!

Example II Change Control – Change control processes are part of 27k – Could be very informal for some systems, very formal for others

Questions