Appendix C Sample Security Policies
To give you a flavor of security policy wording and scope, this appendix includes three sample security policies in use by an organization. For more information on security policies, refer to Chapter 2, "Security Policies and Operations Life Cycle." For more sample policies, check out the SANS security policy website at the following URL: http://www.sans.org/resources/policies/.
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INFOSEC Acceptable Use Policy
Here is one company's acceptable use policy. Notice that even though this is the most essential security policy you will write, this one is relatively short.
1.0 Overview
INFOSEC's intentions for publishing an Acceptable Use Policy are not to impose restrictions that are contrary to <Company Name>'s established culture of openness, trust, and integrity. INFOSEC is committed to protecting <Company Name>'s employees, partners, and the company from illegal or damaging actions by individuals, either knowingly or unknowingly.
Internet/intranet/extranet-related systems, including but not limited to computer equipment, software, operating systems, storage media, network accounts providing electronic mail, WWW browsing, and FTP, are the property of <Company Name>. These systems are to be used for business purposes in serving the interests of the company and of our clients and customers in the course of normal operations. Please review Human Resources policies for further details.
Effective security is a team effort involving the participation and support of every <Company Name> employee and affiliate who deals with information and/or information systems. It is the responsibility of all computers user to know these guidelines and to conduct their activities accordingly.
2.0 Purpose
The purpose of this policy is to outline the acceptable use of computer equipment at <Company Name>. These rules are in place to protect the employee and <Company Name>. Inappropriate use exposes <Company Name> to risks, including virus attacks, compromise of network systems and services, and legal issues.
3.0 Scope
This policy applies to employees, contractors, consultants, temporaries, and other workers at <Company Name>, including all personnel affiliated with third parties. This policy applies to all equipment that is owned or leased by <Company Name>.
4.0 Policy
4.1 General Use and Ownership
• Although <Company Name>'s network administration desires to provide a reasonable level of privacy, users should be aware that the data they create on the corporate systems remains the property of <Company Name>. Because of the need to protect <Company Name>'s network, management cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information stored on any network device belonging to <Company Name>.
• Employees are responsible for exercising good judgment regarding the reasonableness of personal use. Individual departments are responsible for creating guidelines concerning personal use of Internet/intranet/extranet systems. In the absence of such policies, employees should be guided by departmental policies on personal use, and if there is any uncertainty, employees should consult their supervisor or manager.
• INFOSEC recommends that any information that users consider sensitive or vulnerable be encrypted. For guidelines on information classification, see INFOSEC's Information Sensitivity Policy. For guidelines on encrypting e-mail and documents, go to INFOSEC's Awareness Initiative.
• For security and network maintenance purposes, authorized individuals within <Company Name> can monitor equipment, systems, and network traffic at any time, per INFOSEC's Audit Policy.
• <Company Name> reserves the right to audit networks and systems on a periodic basis to ensure compliance with this policy.
4.2 Security and Proprietary Information
• The user interface for information contained on Internet/intranet/extranet-related systems should be classified as either confidential or not confidential, as defined by corporate confidentiality guidelines, the details of which can be found in Human Resources policies. Examples of confidential information include, but are not limited to, company private, corporate strategies, competitor-sensitive trade secrets, specifications, customer lists, and research data. Employees should take all necessary steps to prevent unauthorized access to this information.
• Keep passwords secure and do not share accounts. Authorized users are responsible for the security of their passwords and accounts. System-level passwords should be changed quarterly, and user-level passwords should be changed every six months.
• All PCs, portable computers, and workstations should be secured with a password-protected screen saver with the automatic activation feature set at 10 minutes or less or by logging off (Ctrl+Alt+Del for Microsoft Windows 2000 users) when the host will be unattended.
• Use encryption of information in compliance with INFOSEC's Acceptable Encryption Use Policy.
• Because information contained on portable computers is especially vulnerable, special care should be exercised. Protect laptops in accordance with the "Laptop Security Tips."
• Postings by employees from a <Company Name> e-mail address to newsgroups should contain a disclaimer stating that the opinions expressed are strictly the user's own and not necessarily those of <Company Name>, unless posting is in the course of business duties.
• All hosts used by the employee that are connected to the <Company Name> Internet/intranet/extranet, whether owned by the employee or <Company Name>, shall be continually running approved virus-scanning software with a current virus database, unless overridden by departmental or group policy.
• Employees must use extreme caution when opening e-mail attachments received from unknown senders; they can contain viruses, e-mail bombs, or Trojan horse code.
4.3 Unacceptable Use
The following activities are, in general, prohibited. Employees can be exempted from these restrictions during the course of their legitimate job responsibilities. (For example, systems administration staff might have a need to disable the network access of a host if that host is disrupting production services.)
Under no circumstances is an employee of <Company Name> authorized to engage in any activity that is illegal under local, state, federal, or international law while utilizing <Company Name>-owned resources.
The following lists are by no means exhaustive, but they attempt to provide a framework for activities that fall into the category of unacceptable use.
System and Network Activities
The following activities are strictly prohibited with no exceptions:
• Violations of the rights of any person or company protected by copyright, trade secret, patent, or other intellectual property, or similar laws or regulations, including, but not limited to, the installation or distribution of "pirated" or other software products that are not appropriately licensed for use by <Company Name>, are prohibited.
• Unauthorized copying of copyrighted material including, but not limited to, digitization and distribution of photographs from magazines, books, or other copyrighted sources, copyrighted music, and the installation of any copyrighted software for which <Company Name> or the end user does not have an active license is strictly prohibited.
• Exporting software, technical information, encryption software, or technology in violation of international or regional export control laws is illegal. The appropriate management should be consulted prior to export of any material that is in question.
• Introduction of malicious programs into the network or server (for example, viruses, worms, Trojan horses, e-mail bombs) is prohibited.
• Revealing your account password to others or allowing use of your account by others is prohibited. This includes family and other household members when work is done at home.
• Using a <Company Name> computing asset to actively engage in procuring or transmitting material that is in violation of sexual harassment or hostile workplace laws in the user's local jurisdiction is prohibited.
• Making fraudulent offers of products, items, or services originating from any <Company Name> account is prohibited.
• Making statements about warranty, expressly or implied, unless it is a part of normal job duties is prohibited.
• Effecting security breaches or disruptions of network communication is prohibited. Security breaches include, but are not limited to, accessing data of which the employee is not an intended recipient or logging into a server or account that the employee is not expressly authorized to access, unless these duties are within the scope of regular duties. For purposes of this section, disruption includes, but is not limited to, network sniffing, pinged floods, packet spoofing, denial of service, and forged routing information for malicious purposes.
• Port scanning or security scanning is expressly prohibited unless prior notification to INFOSEC is made.
• Executing any form of network monitoring that will intercept data not intended for the employee's host, unless this activity is a part of the employee's normal job/duty, is prohibited.
• Circumventing user authentication or security of any host, network, or account is prohibited.
• Interfering with or denying service to any user other than the employee's host (for example, denial of service attack) is prohibited.
• Using any program/script/command or sending messages of any kind with the intent to interfere with or disable a user's terminal session through any means, locally or by the
Internet/intranet/extranet, is prohibited.
• Providing information about, or lists of, <Company Name> employees to parties outside <Company Name> is prohibited.
E-mail and Communications Activities
• Sending unsolicited e-mail messages, including the sending of "junk mail" or other advertising material, to individuals who did not specifically request such material (e-mail spam) is prohibited.
• Any form of harassment by way of e-mail, telephone, or paging, whether through language, frequency, or size of messages, is prohibited.
• Unauthorized use, or forging, of e-mail header information is prohibited.
• Solicitation of e-mail for any other e-mail address, other than that of the poster's account, with the intent to harass or to collect replies is prohibited.
• Creating or forwarding "chain letters," "Ponzi," or other "pyramid" schemes of any type is prohibited.
• Use of unsolicited e-mail originating from within <Company Name>'s networks of other Internet/intranet/extranet service providers on behalf of, or to advertise, any service hosted by <Company Name> or connected by <Company Name>'s network is prohibited.
• Posting the same or similar non-business-related messages to large numbers of Usenet newsgroups (newsgroup spam) is prohibited.
5.0 Enforcement
Any employee found to have violated this policy can be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.
6.0 Definitions
Term Definition
Spam Unauthorized and/or unsolicited electronic mass mailings.
7.0 Revision History
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Password Policy
Here is one company's password standard. Again, it is short and to the point.
1.0 Overview
Passwords are an important aspect of computer security. They are the front line of protection for user accounts. A poorly chosen password may result in the compromise of <Company Name>'s entire corporate network. As such, all <Company Name> employees (including contractors and vendors with access to <Company Name> systems) are responsible for taking the appropriate steps, as outlined here, to select and secure their passwords.
2.0 Purpose
The purpose of this policy is to establish a standard for creation of strong passwords, the protection of those passwords, and the frequency of change.
The scope of this policy includes all personnel who have or are responsible for an account (or any form of access that supports or requires a password) on any system that resides at any <Company Name> facility, has access to the <Company Name> network, or stores any nonpublic <Company Name> information.
4.0 Policy
4.1 General
• All system-level passwords (for example, root, enable, Windows NT admin, application administration accounts) must be changed on at least a quarterly basis.
• All user-level passwords (for example, e-mail, web, desktop computer) must be changed at least every six months. The recommended change interval is every four months.
• User accounts that have system-level privileges granted through group memberships or programs such as sudo must have a unique password from all other accounts held by that user.
• Passwords must not be inserted into e-mail messages or other forms of electronic communication.
• Where SNMP is used, the community strings must be defined as something other than the standard defaults of "public," "private," and "system" and must be different from the passwords used to log in interactively. A keyed hash must be used where available (for example, SNMPv2).
• All user-level and system-level passwords must conform to the following guidelines.
4.2 Guidelines
General Password Construction Guidelines
Passwords are used for various purposes at <Company Name>. Some of the more common uses include user-level accounts, web accounts, e-mail accounts, screen saver protection, voicemail password, and local router logins. Because very few systems have support for one-time tokens (that is, dynamic passwords that are used only once), everyone should be aware of how to select strong passwords.
Poor, weak passwords have the following characteristics:
• The password contains less than eight characters.
• The password is a word found in a dictionary (English or foreign).
• The password is a word in common usage such as:
- Names of family members, pets, friends, coworkers, fantasy characters, and so forth
- Computer terms and names, commands, sites, companies, hardware, software
- The words "<Company Name>" or any derivation
- Birthdays and other personal information such as addresses and phone numbers
- Word or number patterns such as aaabbb, qwerty, zyxwvuts, 123321
- Any of the preceding spelled backward
- Any of the preceding preceded or followed by a digit (for example, secretl, lsecret) Strong passwords have the following characteristics:
• Contain both upper- and lowercase characters (az, AZ)
• Have digits and punctuation characters as well as letters, including 09, !@#$%^&*()_+|~-=\{}[]:";'<>?,./
• Are at least eight alphanumeric characters long
• Are not a word in any language, slang, dialect, or jargon
• Are not based on personal information or names of family members
• Are never be written down or stored online
Try to create passwords that can be easily remembered. One way to do this is to create a password based on a song title, affirmation, or other phrase. For example, the phrase might be "This May Be One Way To Remember," and the password could be "TmB1w2R!" or "Tmb1W>r~" or some other variation.
Note: Do not use either of these examples as passwords!
Password Protection Standards
Do not use the same password for <Company Name> accounts as for other non-<Company Name> access (that is, personal ISP account, option trading, benefits, and so forth). When possible, don't use the same password for various <Company Name> access needs. For example, select one password for the engineering systems and a separate password for IT systems. Also, select a separate password to be used for a Windows NT account and a UNIX account.
Do not share <Company Name> passwords with anyone, including administrative assistants or secretaries. All passwords are to be treated as sensitive, confidential <Company Name> information.
Here is a list of don'ts for password use:
• Don't reveal a password over the phone to anyone.
• Don't reveal a password in an e-mail message.
• Don't reveal a password to your boss.
• Don't talk about a password in front of others.
• Don't hint at the format of a password (for example, "my family name").
• Don't reveal a password on questionnaires or security forms.
• Don't share a password with family members.
• Don't reveal a password to coworkers while on vacation.
If someone demands a password, refer that person to this document or to someone in the information security department.
Do not use the "Remember Password" feature of applications (for instance, Eudora, Outlook, Netscape Messenger).
Again, do not write passwords down and store them anywhere in your office. Do not store passwords in a file on any computer system (including Palm Pilots or similar devices) without encryption.
Change passwords at least once every six months (except system-level passwords, which must be changed quarterly). The recommended change interval is every four months.
If an account or password is suspected to have been compromised, report the incident to INFOSEC and change all passwords.
Password cracking or guessing might be performed on a periodic or random basis by INFOSEC or its delegates. If a password is guessed or cracked during one of these scans, the user will be required to change the password.
Application Development Standards
Application developers must ensure that their programs adhere to the following security precautions:
• They should support authentication of individual users, not groups.
• They should not store passwords in cleartext or in any easily reversible form.
• They should provide for some sort of role management so that one user can take over the functions of another without having to know the other's password.
• They should support TACACS+, RADIUS, and/or X.509 with LDAP security retrieval whenever possible.
Use of Passwords and Passphrases for Remote Access Users
Access to the <Company Name> networks by remote access is to be controlled using either a onetime password authentication or a public/private key system with a strong passphrase.
Passphrases
Passphrases are generally used for public/private key authentication. A public/private key system defines a mathematical relationship between the public key, which is known by all, and the private key, which is known only to the user. Without the passphrase to "unlock" the private key, the user cannot gain access.
Passphrases are not the same as passwords. A passphrase is a longer version of a password and is, therefore, more secure. A passphrase is typically composed of multiple words. Because of this, a passphrase is more secure against "dictionary attacks."
A good passphrase is relatively long and contains a combination of upper- and lowercase letters and numeric and punctuation characters. Here is an example of a good passphrase:
The*?#>*@TrafficOnThe101Was*&#!#ThisMorning
All of the preceding rules for passwords apply to passphrases.
5.0 Enforcement
Any employee found to have violated this policy can be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment.
6.0 Definitions
Terms Definitions
Application administration account Any account that is for the administration of an application (for example, Oracle database administrator, ISSU administrator).
7.0 Revision History
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Guidelines on Antivirus Process
Here are one company's antivirus guidelines. Notice that guidelines can be less formal and don't generally contain an enforcement section because they are not requirements.
The following are recommended processes to prevent virus problems:
• Supported antivirus software is available from the corporate download site. Download and run the current version; download and install antivirus software updates as they become available.
• Never open any files or macros attached to an e-mail from an unknown, suspicious, or untrustworthy source. Delete these attachments immediately and then "double delete" them by emptying your Trash.
• Delete spam, chain, and other junk e-mail without forwarding, in compliance with <Company Name>'s Acceptable Use Policy.
• Never download files from unknown or suspicious sources.
• Avoid direct disk sharing with read/write access unless there is absolutely a business requirement to do so.
• Always scan a floppy disk from an unknown source for viruses before using it.
• Back up critical data and system configurations on a regular basis and store the data in a safe place.
• If lab testing conflicts with antivirus software, run the antivirus utility to ensure a clean machine, disable the software, then run the lab test. After the lab test, enable the antivirus software. When the antivirus software is disabled, do not run any applications that could transfer a virus, such as e-mail or file sharing.
• New viruses are discovered almost every day. Periodically check the Lab Antivirus Policy and this recommended processes list for updates.
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