ISO 27001 (ISO/IEC 27001:2017) is an internationally recognised and widely adopted standard which outlines best practices and requirements for an organisation’s Information Security Management System (ISMS).

The ISMS is designed to preserve the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information by applying a risk management process with the aim of assisting organisations in keeping their information secure.

In other words, the standard assists in helping organisations protect their sensitive information including customer information, financial data and intellectual property from unauthorised access.

Through certifying to ISO 27001, your organisation demonstrates to your customers, clients and partners that you are following information best practices.

But how exactly will this help your organisation? In this blog, we will explain how your organisation could benefit from certifying to ISO 27001.

Why are so many organisations certifying to ISO 27001?

Strengthen your management of information security

ISO 27001 certification provides the highest level of assurance that data and infrastructure are safeguarded and handled with integrity.

The primary reason behind certifying or aligning to ISO 27001’s framework is to ensure that you have the tools in place to strengthen your organisation across the three pillars of cybersecurity, its people, processes and technologies.

Aligning to ISO 27001 enables your organisation to identify any gaps and potential areas of vulnerabilities throughout the organisation.

By discovering these, your organisation can then implement the appropriate procedures and systems to effectively manage, mitigate and remediate any risks discovered. Through implementing these, it can help in minimising the impact and disruption of data breached and assist in preventing cybersecurity attacks.

Increased trust and reputation

Once you align with the framework, your organisation will need to be audited by an independent external auditor in order to achieve ISO 27001 certification.

By gaining the certification, your organisation demonstrates to your clients and other stakeholders that you are committed to protecting the confidential and commercially sensitive information that you hold within your business.

Through holding ISO 27001 certification, you are also increasing your organisations commercial opportunities and competitive edge as the Standard may be mandated for your potential suppliers and business partners in certain sectors.

Increased operational efficiencies

ISO 27001 certification requires your organisation to develop policies and procedures to be documented. These assist in delivering a comprehensive and standardised set of security metrics across all processes, business functions and company locations.

Having these policies and procedures in place provide your organisation with a structure and consistency that allows for better communication of policies and objectives throughout the organisation.

Thorough planning also guarantees that in the event of a data breach or incident, the organisation has comprehensive disaster recovery and business continuity procedures that will limit downtime and minimise service disruption to customers.

Regulatory Compliance

As you may know, there is an increasing number of complex laws and regulations surrounding information security and data protection. Any breach brings with it a very real threat of prosecution and potentially large fines for non-compliance.

ISO 27001 helps organisations to avoid the costly penalties associated with non-compliance with data protection requirements such as the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation).

Gain a competitive advantage

As mentioned, many of your potential suppliers, business partners, contractors and agencies may require you to comply with ISO 27001 certification prior to working with your organisation. By gaining certification, it can differentiate your business from its competitors and potentially enable you to gain a competitive advantage.

Increased staff awareness

As aligning to ISO 27001 certification requires all levels of your organisation to engage in the development of controls and procedures, the process will assist in promoting a culture of security within all aspects of your business.

By increasing staff awareness and giving the appropriate training throughout the organisation, it will bring more of a focus on cybersecurity and increase staff vigilance towards falling for phishing scams and other social engineering attacks.

Continuous improvement

The development and implementation of ISO 27001 should be considered as an ongoing process that needs to be continuously monitored, measured and improved.

By continuously monitoring the progress of your ISMS, you will be able to ensure the ongoing adequacy of your controls and procedures to the ever evolving cyber threat landscape and any new regulatory or legislative requirements introduced.