IT security standards

IT security standards or cyber security standards are techniques generally outlined in published materials that attempt to protect the cyber environment of a user or organization. This environment includes users themselves, networks, devices, all software, processes, information in storage or transit, applications, services, and systems that can be connected directly or indirectly to networks. The principal objective is to reduce the risks, including preventing or mitigating cyber-attacks. These published materials consist of tools, policies, security concepts, security safeguards, guidelines, risk management approaches, actions, training, best practices, assurance and technologies. Cybersecurity standards have existed over several decades as users and providers have collaborated in many domestic and international forums to effect the necessary capabilities, policies, and practices – generally emerging from work at the Stanford Consortium for Research on Information Security and Policy in the 1990s. A 2016 US security framework adoption study reported that 70% of the surveyed organizations the NIST Cybersecurity Framework as the most popular best practice for Information Technology (IT) computer security, but many note that it requires significant investment. Cross-border, cyber-exfiltration operations by law enforcement agencies to counter international criminal activities on the dark web raise complex jurisdictional questions that remain, to some extent, unanswered. Tensions between domestic law enforcement efforts to conduct cross-border cyber-exfiltration operations and international jurisdiction are likely to continue to provide improved cybersecurity norms. The subsections below detail international standards related to cybersecurity. ISO/IEC 27001 ISO/IEC 27001, part of the growing ISO/IEC 27000 family of standards, is an information security management system (ISMS) standard, of which the last revision was published in October 2022 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).