Security Management : Fulfillment of the Government Requirements for a component assurance process

Sammanfattning: Protecting organization’s assets from various security threats is a necessity for every organization. Efficient security management is vital to effectively protect the organization’s assets. However, the process of implementing efficient security management is complex and needs to address many requirements. The problem that this master’s thesis project addressed was to propose a component assurance process for the Swedish Armed Forces. This process has to be followed in order for a solution or product to be approved at a specific component assurance level. This problem was solved by first performing market research regarding security management. Various security management approaches were examined and the top security management solutions were selected. These solutions were then compared with the assurance requirements stated in Swedish Armed Forces’ KSF v3.1 (Swedish: “Krav på IT-säkerhetsförmågor hos IT-system”, English: Requirements for IT security capabilities of IT systems). This documentation lists the requirements for information technology (IT) security capabilities of IT systems. The solution that satisfied the most of these requirements was selected and modified in order to satisfy the full set of requirements. Finally, a component assurance process is proposed. This process may be used to decide which solutions or products can be used, along with the manner in which each solution or product should be used. The impact of having a component assurance process is that all the solutions and products are approved to a specific component assurance level exclusively based on this process. The ability to include such requirements in the acquisition of any product or service provides the Swedish Armed Forces with assurance that all products or services are approved to specific assurance levels in the same manner and hence provides the Swedish society with assurance that procedures within the Swedish Armed Forces are documented and protect the interests of the country and its citizens.