Megacorp Inc security policy 1. This policy is approved by Management.
2. All staff shall obey this security policy.
3. Data shall be available only to those with a “need-to-know”.
4. All breaches of this policy shall be reported at once to [Security. Figure 9.1 – typical corporate policy language]
This sort of language is common, but useless – at least to the security engineer.
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It dodges the central issue, namely ‘Who determines “need-to-know” and how?’
Second, it mixes statements at different levels (organizational approval of a policy should logically not be part of the policy itself).
Third, there is a mechanism but it’s implied rather than explicit: ‘staff shall obey
(Ross Anderson, "#SecurityEngineering — Third Edition", PDF-Preview 2020-05-16)
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