ISO 27002, Control 7.6, Working In Secure Areas

ISO 27002:2022 – Control 7.6 – Working In Secure Areas

ISO 27002 Control 7.6 - Working in Secure Areas outlines measures to protect sensitive information within secure zones by restricting access, supervising activities, controlling personal and recording devices, and ensuring emergency procedures are visible. It emphasises a need-to-know basis, strict oversight, and enhanced security protocols for personnel operating in these areas.

ISO 27002 Control 7.6: Safeguarding Secure Areas

Housing sensitive information assets in secure areas such as secure server rooms and implementing strict access controls is not sufficient to maintain the security of these assets:

Employees with access to secure rooms may, deliberately or negligently, cause damage to the hardware equipment and digital assets stored in secure areas or access, use, destruct these information assets and facilities without permission.

Control 7.6 deals with how organisations can protect information assets stored in secure areas against the various risks posed by personnel working in these areas.

Purpose of Control 7.6

Control 7.6 enables organisations to put in place appropriate security measures that apply to all personnel working in secure areas so that they cannot access, use, modify, destruct, damage, or interfere with information assets or information facilities without authorisation.

Attributes Table of Control 7.6

Control 7.6 is preventive in nature as it requires organisations to maintain security, confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information assets housed in secure areas by eliminating risks that may arise due to personnel misconduct.

Control Type	Information Security Properties	Cybersecurity Concepts	Operational Capabilities	Security Domains
#Preventive	#Confidentiality	#Protect	#Physical Security	#Protection
	#Integrity
	#Availability

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Ownership of Control 7.6

Considering that Control 7.6 requires organisations to design and put in place security measures that apply to all operations carried out in secure areas, Information Security Officer (ISO) should be responsible to create, implement and maintain appropriate security measures taking into account the level of risk to each designated secure area.

In designing and applying the appropriate security controls in secure areas, Information Security Officer may cooperate with the facilities management team and information asset owners to put the designed measures into practice effectively.

General Guidance on Compliance

Control 7.6 highlights that security measures should cover all personnel working in secure areas and should apply to all activities carried out in these areas.

While the type and degree of security measures implemented may vary depending on the level of risk to specific information assets, Control 7.6 lists six specific requirements that organisations should adhere to:

Organisations should inform their personnel about the existence of secure areas and about the specific operations conducted in these areas on a need-to-know basis.
No personnel should be allowed to carry out any unsupervised activity in the designated secure areas.
Unoccupied secure areas should be locked and should be subject to periodic inspections.
Use of recording equipment, including those used to record audio, video, and photos, should be subject to strict authorisation procedures.
Carriage and use of end-point user devices such as laptops and smartphones in secure areas should be subject to strict controls.
Emergency procedures should be displayed in a place easily accessible to all personnel working in secure areas.

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Changes and Differences From ISO 27002:2013

27002:2022/7.6 replaces 27002:2013/(11.1.5)

While both versions are similar to some extent, the 2022 version is more comprehensive in terms of the requirements for security measures to be implemented.

In particular, the 2022 version introduces two new requirements that organisations should take into account when implementing security measures for secure areas:

Carriage and use of end-point personnel devices such as laptops and smartphones in secure areas should only be allowed subject to strict controls.
Emergency procedures should be displayed in a prominent place that is easily accessible to all personnel working in secure areas.

New ISO 27002 Controls

New Controls

ISO/IEC 27002:2022 Control Identifier	ISO/IEC 27002:2013 Control Identifier	Control Name
5.7	NEW	Threat intelligence
5.23	NEW	Information security for use of cloud services
5.30	NEW	ICT readiness for business continuity
7.4	NEW	Physical security monitoring
8.9	NEW	Configuration management
8.10	NEW	Information deletion
8.11	NEW	Data masking
8.12	NEW	Data leakage prevention
8.16	NEW	Monitoring activities
8.23	NEW	Web filtering
8.28	NEW	Secure coding

Organisational Controls

ISO/IEC 27002:2022 Control Identifier	ISO/IEC 27002:2013 Control Identifier	Control Name
5.1	05.1.1, 05.1.2	Policies for information security
5.2	06.1.1	Information security roles and responsibilities
5.3	06.1.2	Segregation of duties
5.4	07.2.1	Management responsibilities
5.5	06.1.3	Contact with authorities
5.6	06.1.4	Contact with special interest groups
5.7	NEW	Threat intelligence
5.8	06.1.5, 14.1.1	Information security in project management
5.9	08.1.1, 08.1.2	Inventory of information and other associated assets
5.10	08.1.3, 08.2.3	Acceptable use of information and other associated assets
5.11	08.1.4	Return of assets
5.12	08.2.1	Classification of information
5.13	08.2.2	Labelling of information
5.14	13.2.1, 13.2.2, 13.2.3	Information transfer
5.15	09.1.1, 09.1.2	Access control
5.16	09.2.1	Identity management
5.17	09.2.4, 09.3.1, 09.4.3	Authentication information
5.18	09.2.2, 09.2.5, 09.2.6	Access rights
5.19	15.1.1	Information security in supplier relationships
5.20	15.1.2	Addressing information security within supplier agreements
5.21	15.1.3	Managing information security in the ICT supply chain
5.22	15.2.1, 15.2.2	Monitoring, review and change management of supplier services
5.23	NEW	Information security for use of cloud services
5.24	16.1.1	Information security incident management planning and preparation
5.25	16.1.4	Assessment and decision on information security events
5.26	16.1.5	Response to information security incidents
5.27	16.1.6	Learning from information security incidents
5.28	16.1.7	Collection of evidence
5.29	17.1.1, 17.1.2, 17.1.3	Information security during disruption
5.30	5.30	ICT readiness for business continuity
5.31	18.1.1, 18.1.5	Legal, statutory, regulatory and contractual requirements
5.32	18.1.2	Intellectual property rights
5.33	18.1.3	Protection of records
5.34	18.1.4	Privacy and protection of PII
5.35	18.2.1	Independent review of information security
5.36	18.2.2, 18.2.3	Compliance with policies, rules and standards for information security
5.37	12.1.1	Documented operating procedures

People Controls

ISO/IEC 27002:2022 Control Identifier	ISO/IEC 27002:2013 Control Identifier	Control Name
6.1	07.1.1	Screening
6.2	07.1.2	Terms and conditions of employment
6.3	07.2.2	Information security awareness, education and training
6.4	07.2.3	Disciplinary process
6.5	07.3.1	Responsibilities after termination or change of employment
6.6	13.2.4	Confidentiality or non-disclosure agreements
6.7	06.2.2	Remote working
6.8	16.1.2, 16.1.3	Information security event reporting

Physical Controls

ISO/IEC 27002:2022 Control Identifier	ISO/IEC 27002:2013 Control Identifier	Control Name
7.1	11.1.1	Physical security perimeters
7.2	11.1.2, 11.1.6	Physical entry
7.3	11.1.3	Securing offices, rooms and facilities
7.4	NEW	Physical security monitoring
7.5	11.1.4	Protecting against physical and environmental threats
7.6	11.1.5	Working in secure areas
7.7	11.2.9	Clear desk and clear screen
7.8	11.2.1	Equipment siting and protection
7.9	11.2.6	Security of assets off-premises
7.10	08.3.1, 08.3.2, 08.3.3, 11.2.5	Storage media
7.11	11.2.2	Supporting utilities
7.12	11.2.3	Cabling security
7.13	11.2.4	Equipment maintenance
7.14	11.2.7	Secure disposal or re-use of equipment

Technological Controls

ISO/IEC 27002:2022 Control Identifier	ISO/IEC 27002:2013 Control Identifier	Control Name
8.1	06.2.1, 11.2.8	User endpoint devices
8.2	09.2.3	Privileged access rights
8.3	09.4.1	Information access restriction
8.4	09.4.5	Access to source code
8.5	09.4.2	Secure authentication
8.6	12.1.3	Capacity management
8.7	12.2.1	Protection against malware
8.8	12.6.1, 18.2.3	Management of technical vulnerabilities
8.9	NEW	Configuration management
8.10	NEW	Information deletion
8.11	NEW	Data masking
8.12	NEW	Data leakage prevention
8.13	12.3.1	Information backup
8.14	17.2.1	Redundancy of information processing facilities
8.15	12.4.1, 12.4.2, 12.4.3	Logging
8.16	NEW	Monitoring activities
8.17	12.4.4	Clock synchronization
8.18	09.4.4	Use of privileged utility programs
8.19	12.5.1, 12.6.2	Installation of software on operational systems
8.20	13.1.1	Networks security
8.21	13.1.2	Security of network services
8.22	13.1.3	Segregation of networks
8.23	NEW	Web filtering
8.24	10.1.1, 10.1.2	Use of cryptography
8.25	14.2.1	Secure development life cycle
8.26	14.1.2, 14.1.3	Application security requirements
8.27	14.2.5	Secure system architecture and engineering principles
8.28	NEW	Secure coding
8.29	14.2.8, 14.2.9	Security testing in development and acceptance
8.30	14.2.7	Outsourced development
8.31	12.1.4, 14.2.6	Separation of development, test and production environments
8.32	12.1.2, 14.2.2, 14.2.3, 14.2.4	Change management
8.33	14.3.1	Test information
8.34	12.7.1	Protection of information systems during audit testing

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