Procedure for ISO 27001 Certification

by phuyler1 General

The ISO 27001 certification procedure can be lengthy and complex. Let’s go over the various certification application stages. 

ISO 27001 Requirements for Compliance

The following major components are required for ISO 27001 compliance: 

Scoping. You must do a thorough examination of your information management systems and security measures. Which systems and data are safe, and which ones are not?  

Risk evaluation. Perform a risk assessment to identify potential faults. Consider which weaknesses are the most vulnerable to cyber security threats and which are unacceptable, indicating that they must be addressed.  

Look for any gaps. This is a high-level overview of what needs to be done to assure compliance and qualifying for certification.  

ISMS creation. Your team will establish specific processes, such as training, testing, and deployment methodologies, to ensure ISO 27001 compliance and best practices in information security.

Decision on certification. You’ll go through an audit, present evidence of compliance, and request certification once you’ve completed all of the steps required for 27001 compliance. A recognized entity can award or deny certification. 

Some of these critical certification components will be described in greater detail in the next section. 

Phase 1: Develop a Project Plan and Review Your Scope

The procedure you will use to complete the certification process must be determined and documented. Your entire team, including CTOs, DevOps leaders, and security experts, should be on board. 

The first step in the 27001 certification process is to figure out where you are now.

You should go over:

  • What information management systems do you use, and where is your data stored?
  • Existing security protocols and processes, as well as their coverage of your whole ISMS
  • Your existing DevOps and deployment procedures
  • Your security tools, as well as their interactions with your technological stack (DevOps and programming tools).

Phase 2: conduct a gap analysis and risk assessment

Conduct a risk assessment after you’ve established a list of all of your information systems. 

During this procedure, the following actions will be taken:

  • Create criteria for risk assessment and prioritization.
  • Examine the complete information system for security weaknesses (including processes, hardware, databases, and intellectual property).
  • Record all dangers discovered and evaluate which pose the most serious and imminent threats.
  • Risks should be prioritized for rapid resolution, whereas others should be reported for further investigation.

Following your initial risk assessment, your gap analysis will compare your current performance to where you need to be in order to complete certification. 

Phase 3: Create and Put Security Policies in Place 

The third part of ISO cyber security certification is to develop and implement new security procedures, policies, training, and tools based on the gap analysis results.

All new security rules and procedures should be documented, and your CTO and DevOps executives should understand exactly what is changing and why. You may wish to investigate continuous compliance technology to assist you in monitoring your team’s compliance and highlighting issues as they arise.

Once the policies have been established, begin training your team and adding any new tools into your IT stack. At this stage, you may also want to address some high-risk existing security weaknesses.  

Phase 4: Conduct an ISO 27001 audit

You can apply for ISO 27001 accreditation once you’ve completed (and recorded) everything. 

An external ISO 27001 auditor will first review your ISMS documentation. They want to know that you have the necessary policies and processes in place to reduce security threats and ensure continual compliance.

They will then examine your organization’s processes and security rules. 

Manual data collecting takes an abnormally long time. If you already use DevOps Compliance tools, you can quickly export the audit train for all deployments to a single CSV file that contains all of the important data without having to sift through CI logs, deployment logs, GitHub issues, and other sources. 

There will be no need to trawl through CI logs, deployment logs, or third-party apps for proof because everything will be in one location and ready to go. 

If you pass the exam, you will be awarded ISO 27001 certification. Your certification is valid for three years from the day it was issued, after which you can seek for recertification. 

Phase 5: Ongoing Compliance

The job does not end after you have your certification. Your team must maintain continuous compliance, which includes performing regular internal audits and adhering to all of the security protocols and practices that earned you certification in the first place.

Continuous security monitoring is essential because cyber security risks are constantly growing, and many large businesses have DevOps teams that provide dozens, if not hundreds, of installs on a regular basis. 

Last thoughts

The International Organization for Standardization and the International Electrotechnical Commission created ISO security standards compliance, which is an excellent standard to follow because it is widely recognized and developed.