Security Administrator

Definition

Security Administrator

the role that is played when a person administers the security countermeasures of one or more systems, applications, components, or centers

Classification

As illustrated in the preceding figure, Security Administrator is part of the following inheritance hierarchy:

• Type: Concrete
• Superclass: Administrator
• Subclasses:
  • None

Responsibilities

The typical role-specific responsibilities of a Security Administrator are to:

• Administer and maintain the security mechanisms and components in the production environments.
• Monitor, analyze, and respond to security events.
• Analyse and implement security change requests.
• Administer security policies.
• Support prosecution of security violations.

Security administrators typically inherit all of the general role responsibilities from the role process component.

Personal Profile

To fulfill these responsibilities, security administrators typically should have the following personal characteristics, expertise, training, and experience:

Personal Characteristics

Security administrators typically should have the following personal characteristics:

• Highly Trustworthy
• Detail Oriented
• TBD

Expertise

Security administrators typically should have the following expertise:

• Expert knowledge of security engineering tasks, techniques, and tools.
• Expert knowledge of security mechanisms:
  • Digital Signatures
  • Encryption/Decryption
  • Passwords
  • User Identifiers
• Expert knowledge of security components
• Expert knowledge of commercially available security tools
• Expert knowledge of the security aspects of:
  • Application Frameworks (e.g., Microsoft COM+, Microsoft .NET, OMG CORBA, and Sun J2EE)
  • Application Infrastructure Components (e.g., BEA WebLogic, IBM MQSeries, IBM WebSphere, iPlanet Directory, MS Active Directory, MS BizTalk Server, MS Exchange, MS IIS, MS Integration Server, MS MQ, SAP R/3, and Vitria BusinessWare)
  • Databases (e.g., IBM DB2, Oracle)
  • Directories (e.g., iPlanet Directory Server, MS Active Directory)
  • Operating Systems (e.g., Cisco IOS, Linux, IBM AIX, IBM AS/400, MacOS, Microsoft Windows, Sun Solaris, Unix)
  • Servers (e.g., application, database, media/content, messaging, and web servers)
  • Programming Languages
  • Security APIs and Protocols (e.g., DCE Security Service, GSS-API, Kerberos, Microsoft CryptoAPI, PAM, PKCS API’s, SAML, S/MIME, and SSL/TLS)
• Solid knowledge of applications, contact centers, and data centers.
• Basic knowledge of the customer’s business and application domain(s).

Training

Security administrators typically should have the following training:

• A bachelor’s degree or better in software or systems engineering, computer science, or the equivalent.
• Practical hands-on training in:
  • Security engineering tasks, techniques, and tools.
  • Security mechanisms
  • Commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) security systems
• One of the following security certifications:
  • Certified Information Systems Auditors (CISA).
  • Certified Information Systems Security Professionals (CISSP).
  • Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC).
  • System Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP).

Experience

Security administrators typically should have the following experience:

• A minimum of 1 year’s experience successfully TBD.

Tasks

Security administrators typically perform the following role-specific tasks in an iterative, incremental, parallel, and time-boxed manner:

• Security Engineering:
  • Security Administration
  • Security Enforcement

Security administrators typically inherit all of the common role tasks from the role process component.

Teams

Security administrators typically perform these tasks as members of the following teams:

• Operations Team
• Security Team

Work Products

As members of these teams, security administrators typically produce all or part of the following work products:

• Security Work Products:
  • Security Policy
  • Security Audit Report
  • Security Risk Assessment
• Quality Work Products:
  • Inspection Report
  • Inspection Summary Report

Guidelines

The following guidelines have proven useful with regards to requirements engineers:

• Security administrators should work closely with security architects and security engineers.
• On small projects, the same person may play the security administrator and security engineer roles.
• This role typically inherits all of the common role guidelines from the roles process component.