ISO 27002:2022, Control 8.31 – Separation of Development, Test and Production Environments

Ownership of Control 8.31

Considering that Control 8.31 entails the establishment and implementation of organisation-wide processes and controls to segregate different software environments, chief information security officer, with help of the development team, shall be ultimately responsible for compliance.

General Guidance on Compliance

Organisations should take into account the potential production problems that should be prevented when determining the required level of separation between the three environments.

In particular, Control 8.31 recommends organisations consider the following seven criteria:

1. Segregation and operation of development and production systems to an adequate degree. For example, the use of separate virtual and physical environments for production could be an effective method.
2. Appropriate rules and authorisation procedures should be established, documented, and applied for the use of software in the production environment after going through the development environment.
3. Organisations should review and test changes made to applications and production systems in a test environment separate from the production environment before these changes are used in the production environment.
4. Testing in production environments should not be allowed unless such testing is defined and approved prior to testing.
5. Development tools such as compilers and editors should not be accessible from the production environments unless this access is absolutely necessary.
6. To minimise errors, proper environment identification labels should be prominently displayed in menus.
7. Sensitive information assets should not be transferred into development and testing environments unless equivalent security measures are applied in the development and testing systems.

Supplementary Guidance on Protection of Development and Testing Environments

Organisations should protect development and testing environments against security risks taking into account the following:

• All development, integration, and testing tools such as builders, integrators, and libraries should be regularly patched and updated.
• All systems and software should be configured securely.
• Access to environments should be subject to appropriate controls.
• Changes to environments and code stored in it should be monitored and reviewed.
• Environments should be securely monitored and reviewed.
• Environments should be backed-up.

Furthermore, no single individual should be given the privilege to make changes in both development and production environments without obtaining approval first. To prevent this, organisations can segregate access rights or establish and implement access controls.

In addition, organisations can also consider extra technical controls such as logging of all access activities and real-time monitoring of all access to these environments.

Supplementary Guidance on Control 8.31

If organisations fail to implement necessary measures, their information systems can face significant security risks.

For instance, developers and testers with access to the production environment may make unwanted changes to files or system environments, execute unauthorised code, or accidentally disclose sensitive information.

Therefore, organisations need a stable environment to perform robust testing on the code and to prevent developers from accessing the production environments where sensitive real-world data is hosted and processed.

Organisations should also apply measures such as designated roles together with separation of duty requirements.

Another threat to the confidentiality of production data is the development and testing personnel. When the development and testing teams perform their activities using the same computing devices, they may accidentally make changes to sensitive information or software programs.

Organisations are advised to establish supporting processes for the use of the production data in testing and development systems in compliance with Control 8.33.

Moreover, organisations should take into account the measures addressed in this Control when they perform end-user training in training environments.

Last but not the least, organisations may deliberately blur the lines between development, testing, and production environments. For instance, testing can be performed in a development environment or product testing can be carried out by actual use of the product by staff in the organisation.

Changes and Differences from ISO 27002:2013

27002:2022/8.31 replaces 27002:2013/(12.1.4 and 14.2.6)

While the two versions are similar to a great extent, there are two differences that should be highlighted.

Control 14.2.6 in the 2013 Version Provided More Detailed Guidance on Secure Development Environments

Control 14.2.6 in the 2013 version addresses secure development environments and lists 10 recommendations that organisations should take into account when building a development environment.

The 2022 version, in contrast, did not contain some of these recommendations such as back-up at an off-site location and restrictions on the transfer of data.

Control 8.31 Addresses Product Testing and the Use of Production Data

In contrast to the 2013 version, Control 8.31 in the 2022 Version provides guidance on how product testing should be carried out and on the use of production data in accordance with Control 8.33.

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