| Information flow control regulates where information is allowed to travel within an information system and between information systems (as opposed to who is allowed to access the information) and without explicit regard to subsequent accesses to that information.
From an application perspective, flow control is established once application data flow modeling has been completed. Data flow modeling can be described as: the process of identifying, modeling and documenting how data moves around an information system. Data flow modeling examines processes (activities that transform data from one form to another), data stores (the holding areas for data), external entities (what sends data into a system or receives data from a system), and data flows (routes by which data can flow).
Once the application data flows have been identified, corresponding flow controls can be applied at the appropriate points.
A few examples of flow control restrictions include: keeping export controlled information from being transmitted in the clear to the Internet and blocking information marked as classified but is being transported to an unapproved destination. Information flow control policies and enforcement mechanisms are commonly employed by organizations to control the flow of information between designated sources and destinations (e.g., networks, individuals, devices) within information systems and between interconnected systems. Flow control is based on the characteristics of the information and/or the information path.
Application specific examples of flow control enforcement can be found in information protection software (e.g., guards, proxies, gateways and cross domain solutions) employing rule sets or establish configuration settings restricting information system services or provide message-filtering capability based on content (e.g., using key word searches or document characteristics).
Applications providing information flow control capabilities must use explicit security attributes on information, source, and destination objects as a basis for flow control decisions.
This requirement applies only to network devices specifically for handling flow control. This requirement is NA for databases. |
