Requirement 7.1.1 is about effectively managing and maintaining the various policies and procedures specified throughout Requirement 7. While it is important to define the specific policies or procedures called out in Requirement 7, it is equally important to ensure they are properly documented, maintained, and disseminated.
It is important to update policies and procedures as needed to address changes in processes, technologies, and business objectives. For this reason, consider updating these documents as soon as possible after a change occurs and not only on a periodic cycle.
Security policies define the entity’s security objectives and principles. Operational procedures describe how to perform activities, and define the controls, methods, and processes that are followed to achieve the desired result in a consistent manner and in accordance with policy objectives.
If roles and responsibilities are not formally assigned, personnel may not be aware of their day-to-day responsibilities, and critical activities may not occur.
Roles and responsibilities may be documented within policies and procedures or maintained within separate documents.
As part of communicating roles and responsibilities, entities can consider having personnel acknowledge their acceptance and understanding of their assigned roles and responsibilities.
Key elements of an access control model include:
• Resources to be protected (the systems/devices/data to which access is needed),
• Job functions that need access to the resource (for example, system administrator, call-center personnel, store clerk), and
• Which activities each job function needs to perform (for example, read/write or query).
Once job functions, resources, and activities per job functions are defined, individuals can be granted access accordingly.
Access control models that entities can consider include role-based access control (RBAC) and attribute-based access control (ABAC). The access control model used by a given entity depends on their business and access needs.