How To Maintain ISO 27001 Certification

Significance of Maintaining ISO 27001 Compliance and Key Highlights

Maintaining ISO 27001 compliance requires consistent effort and ongoing monitoring. To keep your certification, you must regularly update your processes so that your information security management system (ISMS) remains effective and relevant. Consistent management review is also vital.

To maintain ISO 27001 certification, a company must first undergo an internal audit and a certification audit by an accredited certification body to achieve initial certification. Once certified, the ISO 27001 certificate remains valid for three years. 

However, to ensure ongoing compliance with the standard, the company must participate in annual surveillance audits conducted by an internal team and the certifying body. At the end of the three-year cycle, a recertification audit is required to renew the certificate for another three years. 

During this process, the certifying body evaluates whether the ISMS has been maintained and improved over time. If successful, the company will receive recertification, and the cycle of surveillance audits in years one and two, followed by recertification in year three, begins again. 

Philip LaRocca, one of the valued managers at I.S. Partners, shared insights on the most critical aspect of how to maintain ISO 27001 certification,

This statement shows that commitment to compliance and a clear understanding of the certification is essential to maintain status.

Steps to Maintain ISO 27001 Compliance

Maintaining your ISO 27001 certification is crucial to protecting your company from hacking and other risks due to weak security processes. Here are some tips to help ensure your ISO 27001 practices remain compliant after talking with our ISO 27001 compliance experts:

Update Your Security Processes Regularly

The ISMS policies and processes you initially created were tailored to your organization’s needs at that time. Therefore, continuous improvement of your security processes is crucial for keeping your ISMS effective and current.

Since the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle is central to ISO 27001’s Information Security Management System, regular updates are necessary as software, hardware, and operations change. 

To validate this, ISO 27001:2013 includes security controls “A.12.1.2 Change Management” in Annex A controls, which mandates that any changes to the organization, business processes, information processing facilities, and systems affecting information security must be controlled.

Update Risk Management Policies

Your ISO 27001 risk management policy outlines how your organization will identify and manage risks, defining your risk appetite and ISO certification preparation strategies.

Since new vulnerabilities constantly emerge, it’s important to stay proactive. Assign a team member to keep up with the latest developments in the risk management process should anything arise. 

Test And Review Risks Continuously

ISO 27001 requires that you continuously review, update, and improve your ISMS to ensure it remains effective. You must repeat the assessment process annually to account for changes in your organization’s operations and the evolving threat landscape.

Using tools like vulnerability scans can help automatically identify new risks, but it’s also important to perform more thorough tests regularly. This combination of automatic and rigorous testing ensures your ISMS stays strong and your organization stays protected.

Perform Internal Audits

Conducting an internal audit is another important step to ensure your ISMS meets ISO 27001 security standards. These audits can be done by someone within your organization or by a third-party consulting firm. It’s important that the external auditor provides an impartial opinion and reports any non-conformities to senior management.

Since you likely conducted an internal audit during your initial certification process, you already have a framework. This same framework can be used for ongoing compliance maintenance, making it manageable. 

Typically, an internal audit will include the following steps:

• Review scope and objectives
• Review a detailed audit plan

• Gather relevant documents
• Check compliance with ISO standards
• Collect evidence of compliance

• Identify and document non-conformities.
• Evaluate the effectiveness of the ISMS
• Draft a comprehensive audit report

• Assess the corrective action plan
• Assign responsibilities for corrective actions
• Monitor progress regularly

Keep Your Stakeholders Informed

It’s important to keep your stakeholders updated on your ISO compliance efforts. Addressing vulnerabilities requires time and resources, so getting approval from the board should be at the top of your list. 

Hence, keep your senior management updated on your activities related to maintaining the ISMS and highlight the benefits it has brought, which will support your ongoing efforts.

Implement and Update Remediation Actions

Ignoring corrective actions or incident responses is one of the quickest ways to receive a non-conformance during your next audit. Fortunately, it’s also one of the easiest problems to prevent. Simply schedule a regular risk treatment plan into your weekly and monthly routines. 

Your corrective action plan should follow ISO 27001 Clause 10.1, a useful framework for addressing non-conformities. Here’s a friendly example of a corrective action process:

• Identify the Nonconformity: Spot any issues that don’t align with your ISMS
• Log Action Items: Add necessary actions to the corrective action log
• Take Corrective Action: Implement measures to correct the issue
• Perform Root Cause Analysis: Analyze the root cause of the nonconformity and its connection to other ISMS sections
• Evaluate Impact: Assess the potential impact of your corrective actions through risk assessments and internal reviews
• Update the ISMS: Make necessary amendments to your ISMS to prevent future issues

Tracking security tasks manually is challenging, often resulting in tasks needing to be noticed or properly monitored and logged for future audits. This can lead to non-conformances during audit assessments.

I.S. Partners, LLC offers ISO 27001 audits that highlight gaps between your current information security policies and management processes and the ISO 27001 certification requirements. 

We provide a phased roadmap to help your company address these gaps effectively. Our audits assess specific objectives of your ISMS to ensure alignment with ISO 27001 controls.

Train Employees on Security Best Practices

According to Section 7, Clause 7.2.2 of the ISO 27001 standard, you need to provide all employees with appropriate awareness, education, and training on information security. Here’s what you can do to maintain compliance and ensure everyone is on the same page:

• Regular updates to the training program
• Provide tools to assess employees’ knowledge of security
• Ensure everyone is familiar with the organization’s security policies and procedures

It’s important that every employee, including those on a contract basis, understands the security requirements.

All other teams, such as HR and the Development team, should coordinate with the Information security team to plan and conduct awareness assessment programs to validate skills, knowledge, and awareness throughout the employee lifecycle.

Use a Centralized Storage Location for ISMS Documentation 

Use a secure, centralized storage solution for all your ISO 27001 documents. This could be a dedicated server, a cloud storage service, or a specialized document management system.

This is because you can also easily see when documents were last updated. This helps you know what may need an update before your next audit. Using version control or date-stamping features can simplify this process.

Set up Clear Responsibility

In any organization, especially larger ones, it’s easy for aspects of security and ISO compliance to be overlooked if everyone assumes someone else is handling it.

Have an implementation team that is ready with the right skills and experience. Clearly define roles, responsibilities, and authorities for each team member. 

Then, ownership of information assets or groups of assets will be assigned to particular roles, considering who will be responsible for what. Key roles that often have information security relevance include departmental heads, business process owners, the facilities manager, the HR manager, and the internal auditor. 

Review and Update Continuous Monitoring Program

Regularly reviewing and updating the continuous monitoring program involves assessing the relevance and accuracy of key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics. Ensuring these metrics reflect the current security posture and compliance requirements is crucial. 

By keeping the monitoring program updated, your organization can promptly identify and mitigate risks, thereby maintaining the integrity of the ISMS and ensuring ongoing compliance with ISO 27001 standards. This proactive approach helps in addressing potential security incidents before they escalate, ensuring the continuous protection of sensitive information.

The Goal of Maintaining ISO 27001 Compliance

The main goal of maintaining ISO 27001 certification is to assure customers and prospects about your information security practices. Continuously taking the abovementioned steps to maintain ISO 27001 compliance reassures management and customers that your company is staying on top of ongoing security incidents. 

Even if your company does not suffer a sensitive data breach or cyber attack, failing to maintain compliance can slow business growth when clients and partners choose to work with an ISO 27001-certified organization instead.

Also read: ISO 27001 vs. SOC 2: Which is Right for your Company?

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ISO 27001 vs SOC 2: What’s The Difference?

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Maintain ISO 27001 Compliance without the Hassle 

ISO 27001 is designed to help organizations establish an effective Information Security Management System (ISMS), ensuring that critical data is protected and security risks are managed proactively. By achieving ISO 27001 compliance, your business not only strengthens its defenses against cyber threats but also gains a competitive edge by demonstrating a commitment to security and regulatory standards.

Maintaining your compliance status is a totally different task.

Take the first step towards robust information security—schedule a consultation with I.S. Partners today and let our experts guide you through the ISO 27001 certification process with confidence.

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About The Author

Joe Ciancimino

Joe is a Director in the I.S. Partners SOC practice. He is a Certified Information Systems Auditor (CISA) and Certified in Risk and Information Systems Controls (CRISC) practitioner and a member of the ISACA Philadelphia Chapter. Joe has been performing IT audit and attestation services for the last 6 years and continues to assist clients in performing a variety of engagements. These include System & Organization Controls (SOC) Reports (SOC 1/SOC 2), Information Technology and Information Systems Audits, IT General Controls / IT Application Controls Testing, ISO/IEC 27001:2013 Internal Audit/Compliance, Internal Audits on a outsourced/co-sourced basis