Information Security Management System
Information Security Management System
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Contents
Contents ....................................................................................................................................... 2
Introduction.................................................................................................................................. 4
ISO 27001 Certification .........................................................................................................................................4
The certification journey ......................................................................................................................................5
Step Three........................................................................................................................... 11
Policy, roles and responsibilities .................................................................................................. 11
Roles and responsibilities ...................................................................................................................................11
Organization chart ..............................................................................................................................................11
ISMS responsibility matrix ..................................................................................................................................12
Figures
Figure 1 The certification journey to Stage 1....................................................................................... 5
Figure 2 Chart showing the level of conformity to the standard in the ISO27001 toolkit’s Gap
Assessment tool ................................................................................................................................ 8
Introduction
ISO 27001 Certification
The ISO27001 standard is recognized worldwide as one of the foremost information security
frameworks. Adopted by organizations small and large across a wide variety of industries,
certification to ISO27001 is increasingly seen as a defacto requirement in competitive
tendering situations, and as an assurance to stakeholders that cyber security is taken
seriously.
We often come across the situation where one of our customers has decided that they need
to become certified to the ISO27001 standard, but they’re not sure how to go about it.
Sometimes, their customers have told them that it is a requirement. So, to carry on doing
business, it’s a must.
This guide takes you through the journey to ISO27001 certification and sets out the main
steps along the way. Note this guide can be used whether certifying to the 2013/17 or 2022
version of the standard.
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The certification journey:
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Step One
Project Implementation
Why get certified? The Business Case
Customer requirement: Contractual requirements are often a main reason you may be
considering certifying to an ISO standard. Even so, if you embrace the requirements in the
standard appropriately, your business should gain many of the benefits indicated above.
Cyber-crime: Your company may have become a target. As unfortunate as this is, cyber-
crime is increasing, so it is more important than ever to protect the data security of your
customers and employees. Cyber criminals are becoming more sophisticated, with regular
reports of high-profile organizations being attacked. Is your organization keeping
confidential and personal data safe?
It is still possible to align your business processes and operations to the standard without
going the extra step of certification - you just don’t open your organization up for audit or
scrutiny on a periodic basis with a certification body. The downside to this is that you cannot
claim or demonstrate to customers that you are indeed compliant during bidding or
tendering opportunities.
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Get management buy-in
The first step, and undoubtedly one of the most important, is to ensure you have the
commitment from top management. If those in charge of the budgets and business direction
don’t think your information security system (ISMS) is a good idea, it is going to founder at
some point, no matter how much effort you put into it. Make sure they’re on board.
“If those in charge don’t think your ISMS is a good idea, it is going to flounder.”
Involve representatives from across the business who are responsible and accountable for
decisions that involve:
The steering group should also have an executive sponsor responsible for the above, the
operation of the ISMS within the organization, and for delegation of authority where
appropriate.
Communication is key
When you embark on the journey to certification, it is important to brief staff across the
business on two key things:
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• Why you want to achieve certification to ISO27001, and what are the drivers for it
• That senior management endorses the plan and is committed to achieving
certification
Figure 2 Chart showing the level of conformity to the standard in the ISO27001 toolkit’s Gap Assessment tool
(ISO27001:2013 version)
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Step Two
Scope, context and interested parties
Define your ISMS scope
ISMS Scope
You don’t have to have everything within the scope of your
management system, so a necessary early step is to draw a ring
around what’s included and be able to justify what’s not. You must get
this right because every step from here is affected by it, so take your
time. Also required is to set out what the standard calls the “context” Defined scope of the ISMS
of your management system – this is really the environment that your Vision and Mission
organization operates within, both outside and inside its boundaries.
Interested parties
The ISO27001 standard requires you to define all the interested IMS Influencers
parties who are “relevant” to the management system. So, who are
these interested parties? As a starting point the key interested parties
for most organizations will typically include:
List of Interested Parties and
• Your customer(s): Customers may contractually require you to their needs
deliver products and services that comply with specific
requirements
• Legal and regulatory bodies: Local, regional or national rules
that apply to you as a business. These often have a direct
impact on your management system as you will likely have to
implement procedures and controls to address these
requirements.
• Suppliers: ISO27001 has several requirements addressing
supplier relationships regarding information security. In
particular, managing risks associated with suppliers’ access to
any of your organizations assets such as systems, or even
physical access to premises etc.
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Document the scope
The Registered Certification Body (RCB) who will perform your certification assessment at
some stage will need to know the boundaries of your management system. Having a
documented scope helps you convey to the RCB where your ISMS starts and ends.
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Step Three
Policy, roles and responsibilities
Roles and responsibilities
There will be several key roles that will be required for the effective ISMS Policy
operation of the ISMS. The following list is not set in stone and will
very much depend on the size and scope of the ISMS itself. Some of
these roles may be combined and responsibilities shared
accordingly:
Information Security Policy
• Information security steering group - (see step 1) Defined Roles and Responsibility
• Information security manager - often also called the Chief for the ISMS
Information Security Officer (CISO) is the primary role with a
dedicated focus on information security and related issues.
• Information asset owner - has primary operational
responsibility for one or more information assets as defined
in the organization’s Information Asset Inventory.
• Information security risk owner - has primary responsibility
for managing one or more information security risks as
defined in the organization’s Risk Treatment Plan.
• Information security auditor - fulfils the internal audit
requirements of the ISO/IEC 27001 standard and is generally
responsible for checking that the ISMS is effectively
implemented and maintained.
• Other roles with information security responsibilities such
as:
o Department managers
o IT technicians
o IT users
Organization chart
It is important to develop an organization chart showing the Roles within the ISMS
reporting lines and relationships of all those involved in the
operation of the ISMS.
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ISMS responsibility matrix
One useful approach for showing responsibility for the Responsibilities within
management of the various sections of the ISO27001 standard is the ISMS
to use a RACI table. This defines the type of responsibility of each
role in each area according to whether the listed role is
responsible, accountable, consulted or informed.
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Step Four
Risk, opportunities and security
Define a risk process
Before you begin the risk assessments, you need to define the Risk Assessment
risk process you want to apply within the organization. There are
many methods and approaches to performing risk assessments,
so it is important to select one that is suitable for your needs and
is not over complicated. More importantly the approach you
Risk assessment register
select needs to help you identify as efficiently as possible the
risks and their impacts, and what actions to take. Statement of Applicability (SOA)
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Organizational assets
This is another important part of the ISO27001 standard and is key to addressing several
questions:
• What assets does the organization have, so that they can be suitably protected from
accidental loss, theft, or malicious attack. Additionally, when staff leave the business,
it is important to ensure the return of company assets that have been assigned to
that individual.
• What information assets does the organization have that are critical to control in
terms of impact on information security, and what aspects of information security do
they have the biggest effect upon.
Risk appetite
This is a key decision to make as it will ultimately determine how you approach and deal
with risks that you identify. For example, if you are risk averse then you may want to act and
treat most risks that you identify in your risk assessment. Alternatively, if you are not too
cautious about risk then you may be prepared to accept or defer actions for risks identified.
These actions are often referred to as ‘controls' and the ISO27001 standard provides a full
set of reference controls within Annex A. One of the key documents from an audit viewpoint
is the Statement of Applicability which sets out which of these reference controls you feel
are applicable to your organization.
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Risk treatment
Now that you have all your risks documented and scored, the next step is to select the most
appropriate controls from the Annex A control set that will mitigate or reduce the risks
identified. The risk appetite may also determine which treatment options you choose and
which to prioritise first.
Infosec objectives
The establishment of information security objectives is key to driving the implementation of
ISO27001 in a particular direction. Typically, at the start of implementing an ISMS, many of
the objectives will be based on achieving certification as well as the other key drivers to
achieving a successful outcome. However, the objectives should be a living and actively
maintained list that changes over time.
In terms of the ISMS there are two main levels of objectives. The first is the high-level
objectives set out when defining the context of the ISMS. The second level of objectives is
more action-oriented and will refer to a fixed timeframe. Typically, these will be specific
objectives that are planned in a particular financial year, are time dependent due to
stakeholder needs, or could be security incidents or improvements that need to be
addressed in a certain time.
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Step Five
Competence and awareness
Staff competence levels
ISMS staff
Ensure that the roles and responsibilities, as described in a competencies
previous step, are documented within the ISMS and that the
competencies and role requirements are defined and
documented for each.
Training register
Communication protocols
ISMS Communication
Define a communications plan that shows all the methods of
communication, who is responsible for each, and how things
will be communicated.
Process and procedure for internal
and external communications
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Step Six
Documented information
Document referencing
Document control
All ISMS documents like policies, processes, procedures, templates
and forms need some unique way of numbering to identify them.
the ISMS documents, maybe through using a simple network folder Supporting documents
structure, or using tools like SharePoint or dedicated ISMS
management tools.
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Step Seven
Operational
Planning processes Annex A controls
At this stage you will need to identify the Annex A controls (inset)
that you have decided to apply to specific risks, and those that
require new ISMS policies, processes, or procedures. Annex A controls identified
relevant to specific risks
Implementing actions
Outstanding actions
The standard requires you to think about the way in which external
and internal issues can affect its ability to achieve the intended
outcome(s) of its information security management system. The
majority of these may be included in the risk assessment process
Implement and document
but there may be other factors that may also need to be
actions to address the
considered. requirements of Interested
Parties
The needs and expectations of interested parties also have a
Implement and document
bearing on the ISMS, as well as risks and their treatment. actions identified during risk
assessment
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Step Eight
Performance review
Internal audits
Internal audits
Maintaining process conformity and continual improvement are
essential – you have spent time, effort and financial resources working
towards or achieving an ISO certification, and one of the most difficult
things is maintaining it. Internal audits are a way of ensuring that the
Train internal auditors
defined processes continue to be implemented as intended and that
they reflect process changes that may result from adopting new Internal audit schedule
technologies, and variations in business operations or key staff.
Complete internal audits
It is important to develop in the implementation stages an audit
programme that covers off all areas of the standard and the policies,
processes, and procedures that are in scope. All these areas need
evidence of auditing before you proceed to having your certification
audit with your chosen RCB.
Review objectives
ISMS objectives
At this stage of your implementation programme, it is important to review
reaffirm and adjust any of the ISO27001 objectives if required.
Progress against objectives should be updated and tracked.
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Management review
Management review
If you haven’t already held a management review meeting, then it is
important to perform at least one or ideally more if possible before
your certification assessment.
Corrective action
Nonconformities and associated corrective actions come from several sources such as:
• Internal audits
• Security incidents
• External customers or interested parties
• Internal staff from improvement suggestions
• Management Review and other internal review activities
Always ensure that you have appropriate procedures and mechanisms in place for recording
and tracking nonconformities and the corrective actions taken, as these are key records
required from the management system requirements.
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Step Nine
Gap assessment plans and actions
Update gap analysis
Plugging the gaps
Ensure that the gap analysis that was done previously shows 100%
or as high a completion as is possible at this point for the areas of
assessment against the standard.
Review of gap assessment
Mandatory procedures
There are several procedures which are required by the ISO27001
standard and associated controls, such as the Statement of
Applicability and asset inventory. All of these should be issued
and as few as possible should be in a draft state before a Stage 1
audit.
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Risks and actions
Check that the risk treatment plan is up-to-date and that actions Final review
are being monitored and progressed.
Check that the ISMS contains fully issued and approved Final review of risk register and all
actions up to date
documents as much as is reasonably possible at this point. It is
acceptable that there are working draft documents at any point All necessary documents are
in time, but it looks bad if you proceed to a certification audit signed off and dated
with most of the ISMS in draft or with unpublished policies and Asset list reviewed and up to date
documents.
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Step Ten
Planning your certification needs
Select a certification body
Certification bodies
At this point you may like to get in touch with a Registered
Certification Body (RCB) who will be able to carry out the
certification audit later. We would recommend you choose
an accredited RCB reasonably early and start to get to know
them, including when they are available and how much they Research RCBs
charge. This prevents surprises later.
ISO27001 toolkit
Written by a CISSP-qualified specialist, our award-winning toolkit includes more than 140
documents- templates, guides, project plans, gap assessments and more. The toolkit will
guide you through each step of the implementation process to prepare you for certification
– a great option if you have the time and staff available to take on the project.
Implementation consultancy
Whatever level of assistance you require from ad-hoc hours or days to
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cover specific topics to a fully managed service, our experienced about our product
consultants are available to ensure you meet your deadlines to get and services
certification ready.
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Our clients use our consultancy in the following ways:
ISO 27001 toolkit
• Ad-hoc hours or days to cover a few specific areas, such as scope,
gap analysis or risk assessment One-hour ISO27001
• Weekly or monthly meetings to keep the project moving forward introductory consultation
• Assistance with writing documentation
Implementation consultancy
• A fully managed project to get you to certification fast
Internal audit service
Internal audit
The all-important internal audit is a key part of passing the certification
audit. If you don’t already have an internal audit department in place, or
a plan to train one up, then you’ll need to outsource.
CertiKit’s experienced lead auditors can help. Bespoke audits are available
to meet your specific requirements and come complete with a
comprehensive report evidencing your internal audit ready for your
certification audit.
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