Basel and BITS

Recently, businesses have started to organize a collective voice for the IT industry, in the wake of the many security violations and publicized vulnerabilities. The financial industry has been especially keen -- with the spate of financial vulnerabilities in businesses, they're taking a close look at all potential weaknesses. BITS, a financial industry organization, recently published a policy on their expectations of the technology industry. They're calling on IT vendors to:

Make security a fundamental part of software design,

Support older versions of products,

Make upgrades easier,

Improve the patch-management process,

And provide businesses advance warnings of new vulnerabilities.

Further, the Basel II accord, which applies to large international banks, expects that by 2007, they must be able to identify and measure their exposure to operational risks, including those from technology. For further information, see the following:

BITS Framework: A Tool for Managing Risk [PDF]

BITS Papers and Presentations

Basel Capital Framework (Basel II) [PDF]

Basel II Whitepapers