Pursue global standards on IT Security

Business Times, New Straits Times
February 4, 2003 SECURE Tangent Sdn Bhd, a security consulting firm, has urged industry players to pursue global standards for information technology (IT) security practices.

Secure Tangent said the company itself adopted one of the world's most highly-sought-after professional certifications in the information security for its consultants.

It adopted the comprehensive Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) certification.

"Companies which are thinking of engaging security consultants, apart from understanding the background of the company or knowing the consultants personally, must look at certification as part of its selection criteria.

"A certification will be a good indicator of the strength and credibility of the security consultancy and services it provides," said Secure Tangent chief executive officer Beh Swan Swan.

From an industry perspective, Beh said there are only about 13,000 who qualify as CISSPs worldwide. Out of that, only 25 are Malaysians.

"This number is pretty low, considering the enormous need for uniformity in best practices to be developed for information security."

Nevertheless, he said we are seeing a trend among industry professionals to pursue higher certification.

CISSP is a certification from the International Systems Security Certification Consortium (ISC), a non-profit global organisation.

ISC was formed in mid-1989 to develop an industry certification programme for information systems security professionals and practitioners.

The CISSP examination is based on the Common Body of Knowledge (CBK), a regularly updated compendium critical to the information security professional and developed by ISC members internationally.

The CBK is made up of 10 domains including access control systems and methodology, application and systems development security, business continuity and disaster recovery planning.

Others are cryptography, law, investigations and ethics, operations security, physical security, security architecture and telecommunications and network security.

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