Topic

Protecting systems and their resources

Applicable to

all

History

Jun 2022

System owners implement controls for each system and its operating environment.

Miscellaneous changes were made to rationale and recommendations throughout the publication to clarify content. This included the adoption of ‘control’ terminology, in preference to ‘security control’ terminology, to allow for the capture of other types of controls in the future, such as privacy controls, in addition to security controls.

In addition, formatting changes were made to the system security plan annex template and the cloud controls matrix template in order to increase their alignment, such as the inclusion of an ‘implementation status’ column within the system security plan annex template. Furthermore, a new ‘responsible entity’ column was added to both templates in order to capture information on the responsible system (in the case of inherited controls) or responsible vendor (in the case of multi-vendor systems) that are responsible for the implementation of controls. Note, this column can also be used to capture information on teams or individuals that are responsible for the implementation of controls if desired.

Dec 2021

System owners implement security controls for each system and its operating environment.

Miscellaneous changes were made to rationale and security controls throughout the publication. This included:

• A review from the Using the Information Security Manual chapter through to the Guidelines for Media chapter.

• Security controls suitable for all audiences have been identified with the ‘All’ applicability marking while additional security controls suitable for just government audiences have been identified with the O, P, S and TS applicability markings.

• Security controls suitable for specific classifications have been amended to include their classification(s) in the wording of the security controls to reduce the reliance on applicability markings to confer suitability.

• Tables in security controls have been converted into prose to allow for inclusion in the SSP annex template and the XML list of security controls.

• The use of ‘official’ and ‘highly classified’ terminology has been replaced with specific classifications to remove ambiguity.

• Security controls relating to high assurance ICT equipment have had their applicability narrowed to ‘S, TS’ reflecting that they are intended for the protection of SECRET and TOP SECRET systems and data.

Jan 2021

System owners implement identified security controls within each system and its operating environment.

New ‘protecting systems and their resources’ content, along with four new controls, have been added to reflect the six step risk management framework.