ISO 27001 is a security that many organisations adhere to so they can better manage and ensure information security within their company. It’s actually only the first of a family of international standards called ISO/IEC 27000. These standards provide solid guidance for organisations, businesses, and entities on international best practices. ISO 27001, in particular, deals with information security management systems (ISMS). If you want your company to comply with ISO 27001, follow this 10-point checklist.
- Recognise Your Organisation’s Needs - Before you can think about the crucial elements of ISMS, you must first understand your organisation’s needs. Getting a clear picture of your organisation’s operations, as well as its strengths and weaknesses, will help you better comply with the ISO 27001 framework.
- Define Your Security Policy - Everything starts with your own security policy. This is basically a general overview of all your security controls and protocols. It must also include how these protocols are managed and implemented.
- Take Control of Data Access - Data sits at the heart of ISMS. That means you need to know who can access your data, when and where it was accessed, and what is the nature of the data being accessed at all times.
- Conduct Security Awareness Training - In order for everyone to do their part in upholding the principles of ISMS, you need to conduct security awareness training programs. These programs should teach all your employees how to recognise data security threats and how to deal with them.
- Implement Device Security Measures - ISMS also involves the protection of physical devices both from damage and hacking. Computers, servers, tablets, and mobile phones used within the company premises should have device security measures in place that will prevent them from being tampered with.
- Develop Security Measures for Employee Onboarding and Offboarding - Whenever a new employee starts in the company, or someone decides to end their employment with the company, these can become a chink in the armour of data security. You need to develop secure onboarding and offboarding procedures. An exiting employee, in particular, shouldn’t retain access to your system.
- Data Encryption and Backup - Encryption is a key element of data protection and should be implemented across the organisation. This prevents unauthorised access to any information within your database. Aside from encryption, any sensitive and critical information should always have a backup in case it is breached or tampered with.
- Monitor Data Transfer and Sharing - Sharing of information is crucial in any business or organisation. However, it is also important to monitor the exchange of data by implementing appropriate security controls to prevent unauthorised sharing.
- Conduct an Internal Security Audit - As part of the ISO 27001 standards, regular security audits will help you seek out any form of non-conformance and violation of your security policy. An audit can help you get better visibility over your security systems, apps, and devices.
- Determine the Effectiveness of Your Security Measures - Finally, there should be a way to monitor, analyse, and determine the effectiveness of all security controls in place. This will allow you to adjust and further improve the measures or even propose new ones that are far more secure and effective.
Conclusion
The implementation and design of the ISMS framework is more a management role than a technological one. It requires you to invest in upgrading your security systems, thoroughly educating your people, and convincing them of the importance of data security services and protection.
Scaramanga is a consulting firm based in Zurich and Munich. Through our 360° end-to-end approach, we help companies and organisations build systems for information security and data protection solutions, legal and regulatory issues, digitisation, as well as governance, risk and compliance. Contact us today to learn more about our services.
