Governance Part 4: Standards

We’ve covered how management uses policies to govern an undertaking, whether that’s a business, a household, or one’s career. Today we’ll continue the Governance series with a look at standards and how they bridge the gap between executive ideals and technical practicality.

The relationship between a policy and a standard is similar to the relationship between a vision and a mission:

Governance Part 3: Policies

In Part 2, we discussed the Missions, Visions, and Charters, which define a task, lay out an overall strategy for accomplishing that task, and authorize someone to do it. Today, we’ll discuss how policies tell everyone to execute the charter to accomplish the mission that realizes the vision. (If I can make this into a spoof of The Court of King Caractacus, why not?).

Humor aside, a policy is a high level statement from senior management to the enterprise describing how it expects everyone to conduct business.

Governance Part 2: Charters, Visions, and Missions

In my Introduction I listed charters, visions, and missions as the documents that state what you’re trying to accomplish when you set out to do security. I’m going to expand on that here.