Prepared by the British Standards Institution (as BS 7799) and then adopted by the Joint Technical Committee ISO/IEC JTC 1 in 2000, ISO 17799, is an internationally respected standard for information security.

Although comprehensive in the wide number of issues it addresses, it has been called a starting point and not a technical specification. However it is a good guideline for organizations to use to start or review a security architecture and the associated processes.

The following topics are addressed in the standard, primarily at a managerial level:

• Establishing organizational security policy,

• Organizational security infrastructure,

• Asset classification and control,

• Personnel security,

• Physical and environmental security,

• Communications and operations management,

• Access control,

• Systems development and maintenance,

• Business continuity management, and

• Compliance.

Now known as ISO27002.