ISO 27001 certification provides a framework for protecting any business with an online footprint or large stores of digital data. Getting certified means your organization has created a risk management plan for information security that meets or exceeds the International Organization for Standardization’s (ISO) criteria.
But the daunting numbers and jargon are enough to make any business leader jumpy. Compliance? ISO 27001? What does it all mean? Aren’t these just more regulatory hoops we need to jump through? Can’t that money be better used elsewhere? Why do we need to spend our time, money, and energy on an audit and a certification?
While ISO 27001 certification and compliance may seem like a burden at first glance, it actually reduces your company’s risk significantly. That means you’ll continue to benefit from a strong online presence and digital data management.
Bottom line? Your profits are protected—and, in many cases, increased.
With a well-designed ISO 27
001 compliance plan, your business can save money by preventing the costliest cyber attacks and data threats. It’s cheaper and easier to prevent a significant data event than to respond to it, but the best plans include safeguards for both prevention and response.
What is ISO 27001 and why is it important?
ISO 27001 is a set of criteria laid out by the ISO that your business uses to protect its data. ISO 27001 certification ensures your company’s data is protected long-term by revisiting your plan with surveillance audits in the years that follow initial certification.
Information security management systems (ISMS) that meet the ISO certifications aren’t just hurdles you need to jump over to get in compliance with regulations and prevent costly fines. They present tangible benefits to your company’s long-term stability and security, not to mention its bottom line.
ISO developed the 27001 certification to ensure your business stays protected against cyber crime and other forms of data loss—both external and internal incidents. Almost all companies today have some sort of digital footprint, which means a company’s data and security runs a risk of attack or even data corruption. Such attacks may include data theft, ransomware, privacy leaks, operational stability attacks, and much more.
Any of these threats can do significant harm to your business.
How do I develop an ISMS that meets ISO 27001 standards?
There are several ways to approach the development of an ISMS. If you prefer a hands-off approach or find the ins and outs of such a plan too daunting, fret not, for you have options!
The easiest option is to outsource the complexities to a professional service like CloudFirst. Companies like this already understand the framework of ISO 27001 and can get your business on its best footing quickly. If you prefer to keep these structures in-house, you may want to consider hiring a data protection officer who can develop the plan and implement it effectively.
A more hands-on approach starts with a risk assessment. Your business’s structure and its needs are unique, so your ISMS will be unique too. A risk assessment will give a broad view of the risks your business faces. From there, you can form a hierarchy of those risks.
Of course, it may not be feasible to develop an ISO 27001–compliant ISMS that addresses every threat to your business. But you can still develop a thorough and effective ISMS that will meet ISO 27001 compliance by employing the 80/20 rule: 80 percent of outcomes result from 20 percent of causes.
The first items on your risk hierarchy, in other words, deserve the majority of your attention and budget. Keep in mind, too, that it’s worth addressing the easiest infiltrations quickly. Criminals attempting a threat from the outside will be on the lookout for easy entry. If you have solid protections in place, you’re more likely to prevent most data breaches.
Regardless of the complexity of your ISMS, it should include a synopsis of what risks your company faces and what steps your company is taking to mitigate those risks and protect valuable data.
Your ISMS should also include a plan, or multiple plans, to address breaches should they actually occur. And each part of your ISMS should have a point person, someone who is responsible for monitoring that part of the plan and implementing interventions should a risk become reality.
Finally, your ISMS should include standards that keep you within regulatory compliance. Be sure to review all regulations relevant to your business and bake those into your ISMS to avoid any penalties and fines.
How should I prepare for an ISO 27001 audit?
An ISO 27001 audit will examine the structures you have in place to protect your business from cyber attacks and other data management risks. If you have built your ISMS based on ISO 27001 standards and procedures, the audit process should be clear-cut.
There are two types of audits: a conformity audit you will need to pass in order to get certified and surveillance audits that ensure your company is maintaining ISO 27001 standards over time.
The ISO 27001 audits will examine:
- Organizational controls: Policies, processes, and procedures
- People controls: How your employees use data and systems, and how they are trained
- Physical controls: Who has access to premises that house sensitive data, and how they access it
- Technological controls: Encryption, authentication, and other forms of cybersecurity hardening
All of these items will depend on your business’s objectives, structure, data, and physical hardware. So the first step in preparing for the ISO 27001 audit is to create your business’s ISMS.
The ISMS contents will largely depend on your business structure and needs. Having a frame of reference for the ISO 27001 audit ahead of time will make the process of building your ISMS easier; of course, if you already have one in place, you can tailor it based on the four bulleted items mentioned above.
Automation can also do a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to your ISMS and ISO 27001 certification. While data breaches are a major concern, data deletion—whether intentional or not—also poses a serious threat to your business. You may be able to automate backup systems that copy data to the cloud, for example.
Once the conformity audit is complete, your business will be ISO 27001–compliant.
How do I maintain ISO 27001 compliance and certification?
ISO 27001 compliance means your business maintains specific documents and records that pertain to your ISMS well after the initial conformity audit.
You will need to keep careful records for continued compliance over time, but take heart in knowing that such record-keeping also directly benefits your business by streamlining processes you’ll need anyway, like inventory, incident response procedures, and a risk management plan.
By maintaining ISO 27001 compliance, you safeguard your business data and IT infrastructure, ensuring employees know how to properly handle that data and preventing costly data events that threaten your business. The ISO 27001 certification shows that you have all of your documentation, risk assessments, inventory management, and other framework in place.
Once you have implemented a plan and the ISO 27001 conformity audit has been completed, it’s time to share the plan with key stakeholders within the company. At this point, you’ll want to train employees on best practices and structures outlined in your ISMS if you haven’t done so already. Any employee with access to digital data poses both a risk and a strength within your ISMS, so it is vital that employees with such access are trained in how to use that data, protect it, and react quickly to threats.
In order to maintain your ISO 27001 certification, your business will be subjected to surveillance audits for three years following your conformity audit. These audits ensure your ISMS is still adhering to ISO standards and that any new relevant threats are addressed in your plans.
Surveillance audits are not as intensive as the conformity audit, but it’s important to take them seriously. Threats to your business can evolve over time, so your ISMS should evolve too.
You must be able to adapt your ISMS to emerging threats; think of it as a living document. You may want to assign a designated employee to the maintenance of the ISMS. This employee can also provide relevant and timely training to employees as new threats emerge.
To learn more about cybersecurity and how your company benefits from ISO 27001 compliance, get your free copy of The Business Leader’s Guide to Cybersecurity and Data Protection Strategies eBook.
