4 DISCUSSION
Each of the models that we studied has a different
context thus having different purposes. CCSMM was
made for a segregated context explaining why it fo-
cuses on collaboration and flexibility. It understands
the changing nature of security where approaches,
frameworks and methods are constantly changing pin-
ning the responsibility of choosing the adequate ap-
proach on the entities themselves. MMISS-SME has
a different added value as it aims to be easy to imple-
ment and maintain for SMEs. The ISO 21827 stan-
dard on the other hand is meant to be an all-inclusive
approach that handles all aspects of security engineer-
ing. It also has the most rigorous update mechanism
while CCSMM does not require one and MMISS-
SME has to keep up with the changes to, inter alia,
ISO 2700.
This difference in intent and context echoes
through the common core of concepts as well. We
see that, ISO 21827 provides more concepts covering
the assurance and process management aspects that
are not addressed in MMISS-SME and CCSMM. We
also see that the concepts that make up the risk man-
agement aspect are almost identical. We can also see
that the missing concepts can be derived from the ex-
isting ones in ISO 21827. We can use this large base
of concepts to model the requirements of any secu-
rity maturity model. Regardless from the differences
in structure, both MMISS-SME and ISO 21827 use
the concept security control while CCSMM does not
provide any at all allowing the adoption of external
ones.
Lastly, we saw that CCSMM supports the imple-
mentation of any approach the entity deems adequate
for their context, thus organizations can implement
the ISO 21827 practices. However, since they have
different evaluation methods and different thresholds
for their maturity levels, they will yield different lev-
els. On the other hand, MMISS-SME consists of re-
quirements that are within the reach of SMEs while
also providing an implementation tool. Further stud-
ies are required to prove the correspondence between
each security maturity model’s levels.
5 CONCLUSION
In this study, we set out to study 2 security matu-
rity models from different contexts and compare their
concepts as well as study their added value and com-
pliance with the ISO 21827 standard. The ISO 21827
or SSECMM standard provides a thorough model en-
compassing all aspects of security engineering. It
thoroughly encompasses all security engineering as-
pects and is compatible with other disciplines. We
have chosen to study the CCSMM a security matu-
rity model adopted by the U.S. government aiding
communities in their quest to be cyber-ready through
collaboration. MMISS-SME, a vetted approach, de-
signed to assist small and medium enterprises to reach
higher maturity level through the use of a tool while
also providing a certification per level. We found
that ISO 21827 provides most of the core concepts
needed to model the other 2 security maturity mod-
els.The standards’ concepts could be also extended
to fit specific contexts or customization through spe-
cialization. That is the case with both CCSMM and
MMISS-SME, their additional concepts are used to
support the nuance in main functions or scope.We saw
that both CCSMM and MMISS-SME were made for
the USA governmental and vital organism structure
and SMEs respectively. Finally, while CCSMM is
compliant with the standard, the correspondence be-
tween MMISS-SME and ISO 21827.
6 FUTURE WORK
Future studies could focus on different security matu-
rity models studying how their requirements can be
expressed and modeled. These studies can rely on
the base concepts provided by ISO 21827 and study
if specialised concepts are needed depending on the
context. This can enable compliance or validation
studies of novel security maturity models with the ex-
isting standard. Modeling security maturity models’
requirements can also help create generic SMM im-
plementation tools. Finally, seeing that security con-
stantly evolves, studies can also concern the security
engineering ontology.
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