A Semiotic Examination of the Security Policy Lifecycle

Abstract

Major security breaches continue to plague organizations decades after best practices, standards, and technical safeguards have become commonplace. This worrying trend clearly demonstrates that information systems security remains a significant issue within organizations. As policy forms the basis for practice, a major contributor to this ongoing security problem is a faulty security policy lifecycle. This can lead to an insufficient or worse, a failed policy. This chapter is aimed at understanding the lifecycle by analyzing the meanings that are attributed to policy formulation and implementation by the stakeholders involved in the process. A case study was carried out and a “snapshot in time” of the lifecycle of IS security policy lifecycle at the organization revealed that a disconnect is evident in the security policy lifecycle.