Dear Colleague,

Today, the evaluation of Information Systems (IS) security in accordance with business requirements is a vital component of any organizations business strategy. While there are a few information security assessment standards, methodologies and frameworks that talk about what areas of security must be considered, they do not contain specifics on HOW and WHY existing security measures should be assessed, nor do they recommend controls to safeguard them.

The Information System Security Assessment Framework (ISSAF) is a peer reviewed structured framework that categorizes information system security assessment into various domains & details specific evaluation or testing criteria for each of these domains. It aims to provide field inputs on security assessment that reflect real life scenarios. ISSAF should primarily be used to fulfill an organizations security assessment requirements and may additionally be used as a reference for meeting other information security needs. ISSAF includes the crucial facet of security processes and, their assessment and hardening to get a complete picture of the vulnerabilities that might exists.

The information in ISSAF is organized into well defined evaluation criteria, each of which has been reviewed by subject matter experts in that domain. These evaluation criteria include:

The Information System Security Assessment Framework (ISSAF) is an evolving document that will be expanded, amended and updated in future. To improve the usefulness of the future release of ISSAF, please take a moment to evaluate it. Your feedback is invaluable to OISSG's efforts to fully serve the profession and future ISSAF releases.

The feedback form is given at the end of ISSAF; please email your feedback at feedback@oissg.org. We will get back to you ASAP.

Best regards,

A.D. Moore