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Information Security Standards
Procedures, Standards & Resources
Simon Fraser University (the "University") is committed to protecting the Digital Information and Electronic Systems that are critical to teaching, research, business operations, and other University activities that are vital to the work and communities we support.
As required under Policy GP 24: Acceptable Use and Security of Digital Information and Electronic Systems, the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) has published Information Security Standards that govern the use and protection of University data and computing resources.
All users of SFU Electronic Information and Systems are responsible for following these standards.
| No. | Standard | Purpose | Scope | Date Revised |
| 01 | Vulnerability Management Standard |
As SFU becomes more dependent on Electronic Systems to achieve new, strategic objectives and sustain ongoing operations, there is an increasing risk of disruption from potential exploitation of vulnerabilities in those systems. The purpose of this standard is to reduce the risk of compromise through a consistent and repeatable Vulnerability Management Program. |
This standard applies to the Electronic Systems that provide or support SFU services hosted within SFU cloud, the campus network, third party data centers, and cloud service providers. |
09/14/2023 |
| 02 | Logging and Monitoring Standard |
The purpose of this standard is to establish requirements for security logging, monitoring, and event management to detect unauthorized activities and enable incident investigation and response for SFU’s Digital Information and Electronic Systems. | This standard applies to the applications, servers, workstations, and infrastructure that provides or supports University services hosted within SFU Cloud, the corporate network, third party data centers, and cloud service providers. This standard is aimed at University IT staff. |
02/08/2024 |
| 03 | Identity and Access Management Standard | The purpose of this standard is to regulate access to SFU's Digital Information and Electronic Systems, ensuring only necessary privileges are granted. This protects against unauthorized access, modification, or destruction, while maintaining data confidentiality, accuracy, and availability. | This standard applies to all campuses, faculty, staff, students, researchers, alumni, retirees, consultants, contractors, internal and external affiliated individuals and organizations, visitors, digital information, applications, and electronic systems including externally hosted services, and personal devices where creating, processing, maintaining, transmitting, or storing institutional data takes place. | 10/03/2024 |
| 04 | Passphrase and Password Protection Standard | This defines standards for the creation and use of passphrases and passwords to protect the SFU’s Electronic Systems that Users handle. Passphrases (sequences of words or other text) and passwords (words or strings of characters) are common and important ways to access and protect digital information on or off the Internet through almost any type of Electronic Systems. Consequently, attackers attempting to access information use a variety of tools to guess or steal passphrases/passwords. The top three ways to keep a passphrase/password safe and protect the information are: • create a strong passphrase/password; • guard it carefully (e.g. don't share it or write it down); and • avoid reusing it for other systems. |
This standard applies to all Users of SFU’s Electronic Systems including, but not limited to, Students and Employees of the University, Service Providers, and all people who have a status at the University mandated by legislation or other University policies, including research assistants, post-doctoral fellows, members of Senate and the Board of Governors, volunteers, visiting and emeritus faculty, visiting researchers, and alumni. |
09/30/2025 |
| 05 | VPN Access Eligibilty Standard |
This standard outlines the criteria for VPN access within the organization, ensuring secure and controlled access to network resources. Eligibility is based on existing roles within the Enterprise Identity Access Management System (i.e. Amaint). |
This standard applies to all Users of SFU’s Electronic Systems including, but not limited to, Students and Employees of the University, Service Providers, and all people who have a status at the University mandated by legislation or other University policies, including research assistants, post-doctoral fellows, members of Senate and the Board of Governors, volunteers, visiting and emeritus faculty, visiting researchers, and alumni. |
06/12/2025 |
| 06 | Encryption Standard |
The purpose of this standard is to state the minimum requirement for encryption and protocols for safeguarding data while stored (“at rest”) or during transmission (“in transit”). |
This standard applies to all Users of SFU’s Electronic Systems including, but not limited to, Students and Employees of the University, Service Providers, and all people who have a status at the University mandated by legislation or other University policies, including research assistants, post-doctoral fellows, members of Senate and the Board of Governors, volunteers, visiting and emeritus faculty, visiting researchers, and alumni. |
09/15/2025 |
| 07 | Cyber Risk Management Standard |
The purpose of this standard is to protect SFU against current and emerging cybersecurity threats that could cause an information security incident. This standard sets out the requirements to enable informed risk-based business decisions from an information security perspective. We follow the Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) framework and report the cyber risks to the ERM Risk Register. | This standard applies to all Users of SFU’s Electronic Systems including, but not limited to, Students and Employees of the University, Service Providers, and all people who have a status at the University mandated by legislation or other University policies, including research assistants, post-doctoral fellows, members of Senate and the Board of Governors, volunteers, visiting and emeritus faculty, visiting researchers, and alumni. | 05/05/2025 |