What Is a Security Policy?

A security policy can be understood in a broad or narrow sense in the security field.

In a broad sense, a security policy refers to a set of security requirements, controls, and process requirements established by an organization to ensure its information security. It establishes the overall goal of information security, defines the management structure of information security, as well as puts forward the security requirements for the members of the organization. This kind of security policy usually exists in the form of documents and belongs to the scope of enterprise governance.

When it comes to firewalls, a security policy specifies rules used to protect networks. It is configured by the administrator in the firewall system to determine which traffic can pass through the firewall and which traffic should be blocked. Security policies are a basic concept and core function of firewalls. Firewalls use security policies to provide service management and control capabilities to ensure network security.

To avoid concept ambiguity, a security policy for an organization is usually referred to as an information security policy, and a security policy for a firewall is usually referred to as a firewall security policy and sometimes referred to as a firewall policy or firewall rule. This document mainly describes firewall security policies, which are called security policies for short.