A function that meets a need of the users (of the service). A series of means is required to provide a service.

Services appear as assets in a risk analysis, either as end services (provided by the organisation to third parties), or as instrumental services (where both users and means are in-house) or as outsourced services (from other organisations that provide them with their own means).

Thus, there are public services provided by the government to meet the needs of the public, business services provided by companies to satisfy the needs of their clients, internal services provided by specialised departments within the organisation and that are used by other departments or employees within it, etc.

As this guide is centred on information and communications technologies security, it is natural that information services, communications services, security services, etc, appear in it without preventing the inclusion of other services required for the effective undertaking of the organisation’s mission.

    [anon] anonymous (without requiring user identification)

    [pub] for the general public (without any contractual relationship)

    [ext] for clients (with a contractual relationship)

    [int] internal (users and means within the organisation itself)

    [cont] outsourced to third parties (provided with external means)

    [www] World Wide Web

    [telnet] remote access to local account

    [email] e-mail

    [ftp] file transfer

    [edi] electronic data exchange

    [dir] directory service (1)

    [idm] identity management (2)

    [ipm] privilege management

    [pki] PKI - public key infrastructure (3)

1.   Location of persons (white pages), companies or services (yellow pages), allowing the identification and providing the attributes of the specific element.

2.   Services that allow users to be entered and removed from systems, including their classification and activating the supply of services associated with the changes of status with regard to the organisation.

3.   Services associated with public key encryption systems, especially including the management of certificates.