The concept of the ISM Community is simple. We are building a “Community of Practice” where people can collaborate on information security both online and in person, creating and sharing things that improve every ones collective working lives and that everyone can use for free without conditions. We don’t want the baggage of formal organizations, politics or hidden agendas but do want a sensible amount of organization and structure. We are building a “Community of Practice”. We are currently organized into five key Focus Areas;

• Identity and Privacy
• Polices and Standards
• Risk Management
• Training and Awareness
• Commons

Each focus area works on specific projects. For a list of current projects you can navigate to the Focus Areas pages. Each focus aims to publish at least one project at the end of each quarter.

We have a steering committee who oversees the activity of the ISM Community. The current members of that steering committee are;

• Mark Curphey – SourceClear
• Tim Smith - BridgePoint Communications
• Earl Crane
• Chris Keogh-Ly – Nomura Bank
• Michael Smith – Unisys
• Mano Paul - Dell
• Jason Bevis and Bill Hau - Foundstone

Our projects are free for anyone to use, anyway they see fit and anyway they like. You don’t need to ask permission or worry about restrictive licenses where you need to give back modifications to the community. The license we use is the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License which allows you to do anything you wish with projects as long as you don’t claim you created it yourself and keep the Copyright statement to that effect. Why did we take this approach? Having run other community projects in the past you can spend as much time worrying about the small minority of people who may abuse your good will and intentions producing community good content. In these days of social media, companies that profiteer from communities without an equitable contribution will likely suffer more harm than good in the eyes of their potential customers and the public at large. In the end all things will be equal. We want the work to be as widely used as is possible.

The ISM Community is free for anyone to participate, collaborate and contribute and of course our work is free for anyone to use. You can browse the Focus Areas and read each leaders blog postings keeping everyone up to date of activity and status. Each focus area also has a mailing list where people discuss and collaborate on projects and ideas. If you are interested in collaborating then you can join the mailing list at the Focus Area pages and introduce yourself. Please note we don’t accept contributions with any strings attached or contributions which won’t be able to be released with our simple free licensing model.

No one is required to join the ISM Community. Both members and non-members have equal access to all materials but we do ask you to consider joining. The ISM Community is in the process of setting up a US based 503.C non-profit which means US companies can join and get some tax dedications. All money is used to run the project and annual accounts will be openly published. Beyond simple infrastructure costs money will be re-distributed to the community to develop projects and benefit everyone.

Here are some general benefits to consider.

We offer 3 levels of sponsorship / membership and specific details and benefits can be found below;

• Corporate
• Consulting / Vendors
• Personal

Corporate – Many corporations pay to have material and knowledge created that they don’t consider a competitive advantage to their core business. A good example is policies and standards or training and awareness material. Companies not only have to create this but they also need to maintain and update it on their own. Other corporations could benefit from collaborative projects which require community support in order to be successful.

Corporate sponsorship starts at $10,000 (depending on the size of the projects you want to see us undertake) and companies can direct their sponsorship money at specific projects. If you are interested in corporate sponsorship or are considering undertaking a project that would benefit from community support or simply like what we are doing and want to support us please contact us.

Vendor / Consulting – Vendors and consultants who use the material that the project creates are encouraged to sponsor the project and become members. You will be listed in the sponsors page. Many corporations have indicated to us that participation in community projects like the ISM Community is now being considered when awarding contracting work t consultants. When awarding grants for projects from sponsorship money it is our policy to pay any consultants (apart from individual contractors) unless their organization is a sponsor. Vendor consulting sponsorship is $5,000 for firms of less than 100 people and $10,000 for firms of more than 100 people. If you are interested in Vendor / Consulting sponsorship or simply like what we are doing and want to support us please contact us.

Personal Membership – As a personal member you get the satisfaction of knowing you are helping out and you get listed on the personal sponsors page. Personal sponsorship is $50. Membership via PayPal will be setup shortly.