An analysis of standards, certification, accreditation and their connections, and a study of the International Success of the BS7799 standard

Dionisis Demetis, London School of Economics

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 2000)

This paper analyses the importance of standards, certification and accreditation, and their emergence is explained sequentially, founded on increasing trust and interoperability between organizations. There is an incremental analysis of why standards are needed and a description of the problems which are faced by other solutions like cross-certification. After this analysis and the presentation of standards, certification and accreditation, there is an attempt to model the relationships between them, leading to the pyramid of trust and the processes involved like auditing and surveillance. Moreover, the importance of standards is found in the information security field, and an analysis of the international success of the BS7799 standard is done in the second part of the paper, something that is carried out by using several critical perspectives.