One of the more broad-spectrum compliance frameworks, ISO 27001 offers a systematic methodology for proactively managing information security, allowing you to safeguard data assets such as financial information, intellectual property and customer details. It is widely acknowledged as a very effective approach for accomplishing this.
We already covered the basics here, but we decided to create another blog, dedicated to the most frequently asked questions about ISO 27001. After reading this, you will have a better understanding of getting ISO 27001 certification, how it works, why it matters, how long it takes to complete, and how much it costs.
Let’s get into the nitty-gritty, shall we?
A Brief Overview of the ISO 27001 Compliance Standard
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) established the ISO 27001 standard to help enterprises manage their people, processes, and technology to ensure information confidentiality, availability, and integrity. The ISO 27001 standard is concerned with a company’s Information Security Management System (ISMS), which explains how information security is integrated into business processes.
Businesses must identify their system’s information security objectives, risks, and controls in order to comply with the ISO 27001 standard.
ISO 27001 is the most accepted standard worldwide that ensures the security of information and supporting assets. In contrast, SOC 2 is the most widely used such standard in the U.S.
Most Frequently Asked Questions About ISO 27001
Here’s what you need to know!
- How does ISO 27001 work?
ISO 27001 encourages the use of an Information Security Management System (ISMS), which is made up of a standardised set of policies, controls, and procedures that allow you to identify what information needs to be protected, what types of protection you need, and what mitigating actions you can take to address any risks you identify.
In effect, your ISMS lays out your plan for managing your information security, with ISO 27001 providing a set of best practices for achieving the plan.
- Why Should You Implement ISO 27001?
A failure to protect your and your customers’ confidential information can affect your business in a variety of ways, with potentially disastrous repercussions.
Failure to secure information can result in very unflattering coverage in traditional and social media, causing severe brand and reputational damage as well as undermining your organization’s revenues and profitability.
Implementing an ISMS based on ISO 27001 will assist you in identifying and managing your most critical risks. This will raise your stakeholders’ confidence that the risk of information security breaches is being appropriately addressed.
- How Long Does it Take to Implement ISO 27001 Standard?
Anyone who claims that achieving ISO 27001 from scratch is a trivial challenge is misleading you. It’s a major commitment. But with the right resource commitment and the right set of tools – including a compliance automation platform – ISO 27001 certfication can be achieved very efficiently. If time is of the essence, a compliance automation service such as Akitra’s can assist you in getting certified within a matter of a few weeks.
Here’s what you need to keep in mind about factors that influence the amount of time and resources you’ll need to invest:
- Your background and experience in information security
- Your ISMS’s complexity and the maturity of its implementation
- Your specific need for compliance or independent certification, and whether you are seeking it because of internal needs or external needs such as customers demanding it
- The security and compliance systems and tools you employ to achieve success
- Does Akitra’s Andromeda compliance automation platform come pre-configured with the ISO 27001 requirements and controls?
Yes, if you subscribe to Akitra’s ISO 27001 compliance automation solution, you will be ready to follow the standards and Annex A controls with ease. This comprehensive, automated platform saves you time and effort as compared to creating your own complex policies, controls, evidence collection processes, reports, monitoring systems, and all the rest. You’ll also get excellent expert advice on how to “adopt, adapt, and add” to the controls provided, in order to adapt the approach to your own business objectives and environment. It’s a complete solution.
Using Akitra’s compliance automation solution can reduce the time and effort required for ISO 27001 compliance readiness and certification by up to 80 percent, particularly if you are your team are relatively new to this standard.
- What is the difference between ISO 27001 and ISO 27002?
ISO 27001 is the central framework for the ISO 27000 family of standards. It includes 114 controls outlined in Annex A.
ISO 27002 is a companion document that provides much more explanation about each of those 114 controls, explaining in detail their purpose, how they work and how to implement them.
The controls are divided into 14 different groups or control zones. These groupings cover several areas of an organisation where information security measures would be expected to be implemented, such as human resources, IT, physical security, and supplier connections. Some control groups have a specific goal in mind, such as cryptography, access control, or compliance, for example.
- Can I use the controls listed in Annex A as an Information Security Checklist?
Many organisations utilise Annex A’s 114 controls as a checklist of best practices to adopt in order to achieve a higher level of information security. It’s a good idea that you don’t rely solely on ISO 27001’s Annex A description of controls, as ISO 27002 provides excellent additional guidelines on how to implement those controls.
It’s also worth noting that, based on your risk assessment, you may choose to adopt additional controls that aren’t covered by ISO 27002 or Annex A to handle high-risk areas.
Akitra advises that you perform a risk assessment to evaluate which controls are relevant, as some of them may not be appropriate to your company – based on your industry, the scale of the company, the nature of threats faced, and the security requirements of your customers, for example.
Your ISMS must be realistic, taking advantage of the security controls and processes already in place and allowing your business to run efficiently without unnecessary complexity. In other words, be careful of compliance overkill.
ISO 27001 Compliance with Akitra!
Akitra offers an industry-leading, AI-powered Compliance Automation platform for SaaS companies. Using automated evidence collection and continuous monitoring, together with a full suite of customizable policies and controls as a compliance foundation, our service helps customers become certified efficiently and painlessly. Frameworks supported include SOC 1, SOC 2, ISO 27001, HIPPA, PCI DSS, GDPR and NIST 800-53.
Our compliance and security experts will also provide you with the customized guidance you need to confidently navigate the end-to-end compliance process.
The benefits of our solution include enormous savings in time, human resources and money — including discounted audit fees with our audit firm partners. Customers achieve compliance certification fast and cost-effectively, stay continuously compliant as they grow, and can become certified under additional frameworks using a single compliance automation platform.
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