DIN SPEC 14027 in five minutes. What the new corporate security standard covers

DIN SPEC 14027 goes back to the action plan for Germany's National Economic Security Strategy. One of its tasks was to develop the 2016 economic baseline protection framework so that organisations without a large security department could apply it ². The Federal Ministry of the Interior initiated and funded the work, and DIN organised the procedure. The working title Corporate Security Grundschutz, or corporate security baseline protection, remains the common short name ³.

The document was developed under the PAS procedure, a Publicly Available Specification. Unlike a classic DIN standard, a DIN SPEC is drawn up by a temporary consortium without the full consensus procedure of the standards committees. It is therefore not part of the German body of standards and creates no legal obligation ¹. The consortium was led by the company BioNTech, with the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich as deputy ³. The standard was presented on 19 March 2026 at the security conference of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Association for Security in Industry and Commerce in Berlin ⁴+15 wirtschaftsschutz.info, Neue DIN SPEC Corporate Security.

The full title is Corporate Security. Requirements for strengthening the physical resilience of organizations. The first four clauses cover scope, references, terms and the structure of the document. Clauses 5 to 20 then set out the 16 fields of action. Every field follows the same pattern. A general part explains what the field is about, a requirements part describes what an organisation must or should do, and an interfaces part shows which other fields the topic connects to.

The 16 fields of action are protection requirement analysis, security situation report, security culture and communication, internal investigation, disruption, emergency and crisis management, business continuity management, site security, close protection, event security, threat management, travel security, integrity screening, know-how protection, supply chain security, selection and management of security-related services, and the design and operation of a security management system.

The actual yardstick is Annex A. For each field of action it contains a numbered requirements catalogue that states for every requirement at which of the four security levels it applies. Many requirements come in two versions, as a recommendation for low and medium protection requirements and as an obligation for elevated and high ones. Annex B adds tools, including an overview of typical threat scenarios and a list of internal departments that frequently act as interface partners of corporate security.

The heart of the standard is the protection requirement analysis in clause 5. An organisation first identifies its assets, meaning sites, facilities, people, information and processes, and rates each asset along two dimensions. Asset criticality describes how severe a failure or loss would be. Threat intensity describes how likely and how exposed an asset is to threats. Both dimensions are rated on four levels from A for very high to D for low and combined in a matrix. The result is the protection requirement, which in turn determines which requirements from the catalogues apply.

The standard distinguishes between a gross assessment, which describes the current state with the measures already in place, and a net risk, which remains after the protection concept has been implemented. Top management must approve the protection concept, and it has to be updated regularly. This logic ensures that a craft business with a single site does not have to implement the same measures as a corporation operating critical infrastructure.

DIN SPEC 14027 focuses on physical resilience. It does not cover information security and cyber security itself but refers to ISO 27001 and the relevant standards. Occupational safety, classified information protection, plant fire brigades, fraud prevention, project security and security controlling are also excluded. Organisations that need to cover those topics still need the respective specialist standards. The advantage of this delimitation is a document that concentrates on one discipline and becomes all the more concrete for it.

The standard names three user groups. Organisations that are only starting to build corporate security get a structure from the fields of action and a checklist from the catalogues. Organisations with existing structures can add individual fields, such as a missing security situation report or a supply chain review. And organisations with a mature security function use the catalogues as a benchmark to review where they stand. This fits the explicit permission to apply the standard in modules. Nobody has to tackle all 16 fields at once.

DIN SPEC 14027 does not compete with the well-known management system standards. It closes a gap next to them. ISO 27001 covers information security, ISO 22301 business continuity management, ISO 31000 risk management and DIN ISO 28000 security in the supply chain. The standard refers to these documents and adopts their terminology where it fits. What was missing until now was a standard for plant security, site security, close protection, travel security and situation reporting that was not written for large corporations only. That is exactly the gap DIN SPEC 14027 fills ⁶.

Several developments are driving demand. Sabotage of infrastructure, espionage, drone incidents and disinformation campaigns have put the physical security of companies back on the agenda of senior management in recent years ²+15 wirtschaftsschutz.info, Neue DIN SPEC Corporate Security. Chambers of industry and commerce, associations such as VSW and bayme vbm, and training academies have been offering events and seminars on the standard since spring 2026 ⁶+27 Verband für Sicherheit in der Wirtschaft (VSW), Meldung zur DIN SPEC 140278 bayme vbm, Neue DIN SPEC 14027 Corporate Security. And because the standard is freely available, clients can use it as a common yardstick in supplier assessments and tenders. Suppliers who are asked about the state of their corporate security now have, for the first time, a language both sides understand.

Getting started is easier than the size of the document suggests. The first step is the free download from DIN Media ¹. The second step is the protection requirement analysis for the most important assets, because it determines the security level and with it the scope of all further requirements. The third step is choosing the fields of action that promise the greatest benefit. In practice these are often the security situation report, disruption, emergency and crisis management, and site security, because they have an immediate effect on day-to-day operations. How the standard describes the security situation report in detail and how OSINT monitoring supports it is explained on our page Security situation report under DIN SPEC 14027.