ISO 27001 is the Information Security Management standard (ISMS) designed by the International Organization for Standardization to effectively manage risk associated with data assets such as customer and employee details, intellectual property, financial information, and third-party records.
Achieving an ISO 27001 certification can increase your company’s chance of winning new business and improve your reputation for showing commitment to data security.
Gaining certification to ISO 27001 with an effective ISMS helps defend against ongoing cyber-attack threats and ensures customer data is properly stored, protected and backed up.
ISO 27001 requires organisations to assess information security risks and implement up-to-date security controls efficiently.
Organisations implement ISO 27001 for many reasons, including showing compliance with privacy regulations worldwide, strengthening customer trust, and enabling access to data-centric tenders that require a high degree of data, network and IT security. The standard is suitable for all industries that collect and store data, whether large corporations or small to medium businesses.
Discover how Certification Europe can help your organisation start its ISO 27001 certification journey.
ISO 27001 has recently been updated, and Certification Europe has successfully achieved accreditation to ISO/IEC 27001:2022 from the Irish National Accreditation Board, making us one of the first Certification Bodies in Europe to be able to accredit to the new standard.
Is ISO 27001 enough?
ISO 27001 is a fundamental standard for all companies to protect their information that acts as a central plank in data security standards and provides a foundation for building IT resilience.
However, as technology evolves, data protection risks and cyber-attack threats are also rising. Therefore, companies must keep up with the latest processes to ensure optimum data protection.
This means building on the robust ISO 27001 standard with additional, supporting data security standards designed to meet emerging technologies and IT needs, such as cloud networks and handling personal data.
For organisations offering services in the cloud and aiming to encompass all cloud-focused security, implementing further standards, such as ISO 27017 as an appendix, could greatly benefit their company.
Companies that specialise in handling personal data and want to protect it appropriately, for example, could benefit by adding ISO 27018 if your company manages a high volume of personal data and specialises in cloud storage.
Implementing ISO 27017 and ISO 27018 provides overlapping security compliance and demonstrates a depth of IT security management that helps set your business apart from other organisations and reinforces customer trust.
Additionally, achieving certification in standards for your company can help you to safeguard your business from costly negligence if a breach occurs as you can demonstrate effective an ISMS is in place.
ISO 27701
ISO 27701 Privacy Information Management Systems is an appendix of ISO 27001 and expands on the features ISO 27001 offers.
Organisations implementing ISO 27701 must already be ISO 27001 certified. ISO 27701 guides organisations on procedures and practises that should be in place to comply with data protection and privacy regulations and laws. For example, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) works to establish a mutual data protection law for all EU countries, allowing European citizens to understand how their information is being used and raise any queries regarding how their data is being kept.
The ISO 27701 standard provides a valuable framework to help organisations demonstrate compliance with GDPR.
Find out more about ISO 27701.
Read our guide to how to demonstrate GDPR compliance.
ISO 27017
ISO 27017 Cloud Data Protection offers additional support for ISO 27002 information security controls, so organisations intending to implement ISO 27017 must already be ISO 27001 certified. ISO 27017 works to protect information specifically within the cloud computing environment. It benefits organisations that have an existing ISMS in place. By implementing this standard, organisations can better safeguard data within the cloud and, in doing so, reduce the risk of information security breaches.
Find out more about ISO 27017.
Read our IT and cybersecurity tips.
ISO 27018
ISO 27018 Protection of Personal Identifiable Information (PII) is an international standard that protects sensitive customer data in cloud computing. As it is an additional ISMS, organisations implementing ISO 27018 documentation need to be ISO 27001 certified.
While ISO 27017 works to ensure better security protection for users, ISO 27018 safeguards how personal data is handled through regulatory requirements. ISO 27018’s primary function is to help organisations secure customer data assisting them in choosing and applying appropriate security controls. Since ISO 27018 provides the same parameters for different countries, it aids international business. A positive global reputational benefit of ISO 27018 is that it strengthens trust between organisations and their customers.
Find out more about ISO 27018.
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