ISO 27001 Checklist: How to Get Ready for Certification

Contents: 

Find Out How Ready You Are

Seven Clauses of ISO 27001 You Need to Check:

• Context of the organization
• Leadership
• Planning
• Support
• Operation
• Performance evaluation
• Improvement

How to Use ISO 27001 Checklist

What to Expect from ISO 27001

Companies go to great lengths to create an ISMS — they rigorously follow the information security standard ISO 27001, implement robust GRC solutions, attend costly training courses, and undergo nerve-wracking audits. 

To make it less stressful, here is a concise version of the ISO 27001 checklist by the BSI Group, the global standardization organization, to ensure your company is ready for the ISO 27001 certification. 

Find Out How Ready You Are

This pre-certification stage focuses mainly on ensuring that your organization is familiar with the principles of ISO 27001 and understands the roles individuals are expected to perform as well as assessing your activities and processes against the standard.

The checklist covers seven areas or clauses with a total number of 63 questions. Completing the questionnaire provides the information required for analysis.

Here are the seven areas that you have to thoroughly check before certifying against ISO 27001: 

• Context of the organization
• Leadership
• Planning
• Support
• Operation
• Performance evaluation
• Improvement

Seven Clauses of ISO 27001 You Need to Check

Now, let’s look closer at each concept represented in the checklist ISO 27001. 

1. Context of the Organization

Simply speaking, the context of the organization is the business environment determined by external and internal issues that can impact the ISMS of an organization. External issues may include financial, legal, regulatory, and social factors, while internal issues involve the company’s structure, resources, and management.

To establish your organization’s context, you should identify all external and internal factors relevant to your company, your information, and the information entrusted to you by other parties. 

You’ll also be able to identify all the interested parties and stakeholders, as well as their relevance to the information. You must determine the obligations for the interested parties, including legal, regulatory, or contractual requirements.

After that, you’ll need to determine the scope of your information security management system, taking into account the strategic focus of your company, its objectives, and the requirements of interested parties. Finally, demonstrate how you establish, implement, support, and enhance the ISMS in compliance with ISO 27001.

2. Leadership

The top management of your organization needs to demonstrate their devotion, leadership, and commitment by enforcing the information security management system and security policies, which align with the company’s strategy. It’s also their responsibility to communicate the importance of the measures taken to all parties involved.

3. Planning

The planning clause indicates how you will plan your company’s actions to deal with information security risks. You’ll be required to develop the Statement of Applicability (SoA) for successful ISO 27001 certification. The SoA document clarifies which Annex A security controls you’ve included in or excluded from your organization’s ISMS and why. 

In addition, this clause specifies how information security objectives must be defined and what properties they must have.

4. Support

The significant issues in this clause are resources, the proper infrastructure, the competence of employees, awareness, and communication for establishing, improving, and maintaining the ISMS in your organization. Another requirement is registering information according to ISO 27001. The information must be documented, updated, and managed. 

5. Operation

The purpose of this clause is to execute the mandatory processes for implementing information security. It is necessary to plan, implement, and control these processes. At this stage, the management needs to put into action the scheduled assessment and treatment of risks. In addition, you’ll have to press ahead with the risk treatment plan and document its results. 

6. Performance Evaluation

The main objective of the performance evaluation clause is to assess how effective your security information management system is by continually monitoring, measuring, and analyzing it. To do so, it is needed to contemplate what information should be analyzed to assess the effectiveness of your ISMS. You’ll also need to conduct internal and external audits at set intervals. 

7. Improvement

The improvement clause focuses on your readiness to take action and the methods you use to react to deviations, how to fix them, and how to deal with the outcomes. Furthermore, you will need to explain how you intend to eliminate the causes of any similar deviations so that they do not occur in the future.

How to Use ISO 27001 Checklist

Take time to carefully read the questions and tick the boxes on the list. Yet, remember that you will not get a solid picture immediately. You need a method to calculate and interpret the score into a conclusion. That means you are to analyze the gathered data to identify your position in the compliance process.

However, it might be pretty challenging to figure out the result on your own. To take the burden of this daunting task off your shoulders, you might be interested in engaging professional compliance consultants.

Another tool that could simplify compliance processes is robust and effective software solutions. They are created by security experts and usually include bundles of supporting services.

At Infopulse GmbH, we provide both compliance consulting services and ISO 27001 software tool Infopulse Standards Compliance Manager with complete support for ISMS implementation, from identifying objectives to automated periodic audits of your organization’s compliance status as per ISO 27001 or any other standards.

What to Expect from ISO 27001

Being certified in ISO 27001 paves the road to several outstanding objectives:

• Protected business and its reputation as well as increased value
• Assurance to the organization’s partners and customers of the company and their data security
• The increased bottom line in an organization’s revenue due to lower risk
• Improved processes due to compliance with the industry best practices and regulations

Infopulse Standards Compliance Manager provides complete support on the way of ISMS implementation, from defining the scope of your information security management system to automated periodic audits of your organization’s compliance status as per ISO 27001 or any other standard.

ISO 27001 Checklist from Infopulse Gmbh

This checklist is a version of the BSI ISO/IEC 27001:2013 self-assessment questionnaire, which assists you in evaluating the preparedness of your company’s information security management system for the SO/IEC 27001:2013 certification.