How we help you become ISO 27001 compliant?

Introduction

In the Q3 of 2022, the global number of data breaches increased by 70%, with a predicted loss of $10.5 trillion due to a data breach in 2025.

Businesses across the globe have worried about the increasing risk of compromising their information assets.

For the protection of these information assets, businesses have implemented ISMS (Information Security Management Systems) to better manage the security of their sensitive information.

To ensure information security across global businesses, regulatory bodies like the International Organization for Standardization have come up with mandatory guidelines for configuring their information security management solution.

With our guide, we will look into what ISO 27001 compliance is, its importance, and how SharkStriker helps businesses across the globe achieve their ISO 27001 certification.

Wait but.. what is ISMS and why is it important?🤔

You must be scratching your head thinking “What is ISMS? And why are businesses after it ?”

Before understanding what ISO 27001 is, we must understand what ISMS is and its importance.

ISMS stands for Information Security Management System.

It is all the policies, measures, and policies designed to ensure information security in an organization. It includes all the proactive measures to safeguard sensitive data from data breaches.

Since each organization differs from another in nature and size, it is important to fine-tune ISMS to their requirements for maximum output.

Now let us get back to what ISO 27001 is and its benefits.

Understanding ISO 27001📝

ISO 27001 is the shortened abbreviation of ISO/IEC 27001:2013.

It was framed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 2013.

It states the best practices and benchmarks for a framework Information Security Management Systems framework in organizations.

It is one of the toughest compliance to achieve. It demands a lot of time, effort, and most importantly, a cultural change that most organizations find difficult to implement.

However, following the ISMS frameworks mentioned in ISO 27001, an organization can ensure a decent foundation for an ISMS framework.

Any organization, regardless of its size, nature of business, or location, can ensure a foundational level of security with the guidelines.

Benefits of ISO 27001 compliance🍪

Let us take a look at some of the most important business benefits of ISO27001:

Enhances brand loyalty

Customers and employees want the protection of their sensitive data. When you take all the measures mentioned in the ISO 27001 guidelines, you experience increased loyalty to your brand. It is from the increased trust of your customers and employees from enhanced information security.  

Helps your business achieve third-party validation

When you get certified, you get third-party validation of your information security. You get an improved reputation from your customers, employees, and partners. With validation from an internationally reputed body, you can confidently explore other avenues of growth for your business.

It gives you a competitive advantage

Staying afloat in a highly competitive environment can be challenging, especially when there is a threat of a data breach looming above your head. Getting certified helps you assure your customers and partners that their data is in safe hands and that they should be stress-free from the threat of data breaches.

Prove and Improve credibility in the global market

When you expand your business around the globe, you need to establish a customer base from scratch needing a solid first impression on your new customers. Having ISO 27001 certification helps you prove your information security standards and increases your credibility in the global market.

Helps meet industry standards

Let’s admit that compliance is no longer a requirement, it is a necessity and has become an industry standard. According to one research, over 68% of clients preferred ISO 27001-certified businesses over any other that were not certified. Getting certified helps you achieve industry standards demanded by customers and partners worldwide.

Establishes foundational security for your company 

ISO 27001 ensures a basic level of foundational information security framework by recommending some of the best practices of information security from the industry. Any business can experience a good level of information security regardless of its size, nature, or location if they thoroughly implement the guidelines for the ISMS framework.

Puts you in good company of clients and partners

Implementing globally renowned compliance automatically puts you in a company of world-class partners and customers who seek companies following international information security standards and whom they can trust. It opens a new door of opportunities for your business.

Saves cost otherwise lost in data breaches

This compliance suggests some of the best-in-class information security measures that ensure damage control of your most valuable information assets from data breaches and ransomware attacks. Most importantly, it saves you from the legal costs you have to incur as a result of data breaches. As per IBM research in 2022, the average legal cost of data breaches was $4.35 million.

Challenges to ISO 27001👹

The following are the different challenges of meeting ISO 27001 compliance:

Demands increased time, effort, and money

Just like any other regulatory or global compliance, ISO 27001 demands dedicated time, effort, and money. Many times CISOs don’t have a fixed budget allocated for information security. Therefore, they find it challenging to implement all the guidelines set by ISO 27001.

Over 54% of CISOs surveyed said that their board did not have the budget needed to implement ISO 27001 information security guidelines.

Requires a culture for information security

The biggest misconception regarding ISO 27001 is that organizations believe that it is just a given set of controls and guidelines to be implemented.

However, it demands a cultural change that is almost impossible to achieve without strong leadership and awareness. It is an organizational responsibility that demands the active participation of each level from top to bottom. This is the aspect where most organizations find themselves in a deadlock.

Over 55% of organizations say their culture is based on “can we” rather than “should be” for compliance.

They lack the expertise and resources to implement

More often than not, organizations don’t have the expertise, dedicated team, and resources to tackle ISO 27001-specific challenges. Some aspects of compliance are difficult to understand and implement especially those that demand industry expertise.

44% of organizations say their top compliance challenge is compliance assessment, control testing, and policy and process implementation.

Gaps in human awareness

Organizations often fail to implement ISO guidelines because of one simple yet major challenge – nobody understands what ISO 27001 is about or its importance. They often fail to test awareness levels across their organization for ISO 27001 which leads to failure in the implementation of guidelines across all the levels of the organization.

Only 43% of the world’s organizations are investing in raising awareness of information security.

The following are the industries that face the most challenges in becoming compliant with ISO 27001 and ensuring information security measures in their organizations:

• Government
• Healthcare 
• Logistics 
• Education
• Communications

Where do we help?💪

Do these challenges sound relatable to you? Yes?

What if we told you we got a solution for all these challenges for you?

SharkStriker has dedicated compliance as a service for ISO 27001, led by compliance consultants and cybersecurity experts.  Our compliance management services are focused on holistically solving all the compliance challenges and requirements.

So, all you gotta do is, have a short call with our compliance team that will draw up a tailored compliance plan for your organization.

The following are the ways through which we help organizations become compliant:

Scope Gathering

The foremost step is to understand our client’s ISO-specific requirements and the challenges that they are facing so that we can tailor solutions for them. We have one-to-one sessions and engage in multiple sessions to understand their scope completely.

Post-understanding everything, we draw a detailed plan of action for a well-directed execution.

Gap Assessment

Now the real action begins. We engage in top-to-bottom security assessment, using baseline posture assessment, vulnerability assessments, risk assessments, pen testing, and firewall assessments. It helps us understand where they stand in terms of security posture and assists us in planning the succeeding steps to treat them.

Risk Treatment Plan

Once we assess all the risks and the weaknesses in the posture, we prepare a detailed risk treatment plan that consists of all the security controls, measures, policies, procedures, and rules to implement. We describe the role of the leadership and responsibilities of various personnel across different levels of the organization to establish a foundation for information security in the organization.

Implementation

It is the most vital step where we identify the resources, expertise, technology, and tools best fit for implementing the risk treatment plan. Next, we deploy managed security solutions and incident response measures. We implement measures for threat hunting, detection, and response. This is where our SIEM solution comes into the picture that provides all pervasive eyes and brains to your IT infrastructure. It automatically responds to threats using AI and Ml and engages in continuous monitoring, and log & event collection, providing you with all the necessary reports for compliance achievement.  

Post-implementation audit 

To ensure that the implementation process underwent smoothly, we conduct a top-to-bottom audit to check if any gaps were left out and addressed. If we find any gaps in implementation, we take measures immediately to get them resolved and prepare a detailed report of our findings highlighting key areas to be further improved.

Training and Awareness

Since awareness and culture for information security is a fundamental core of ISO compliance, we ensure that each level of the organization has no gaps in awareness. We plan training and awareness sessions and recommend measures to mitigate awareness gaps.

Conclusion🔚

We have seen the value that compliance holds on the global stage with the business benefits that it offers. We have also taken a myopic view of the challenges that most organizations face in their journey to becoming compliant. 

Since you have read our blog, it is obvious that you have some interest in compliance. Whatever your individual need is for the certification, it would be better to draw a scope based on discussing it with a team of compliance experts. They are better equipped with the knowledge, tools, and expertise to come up with a detailed course of action for ISO 27001 achievement.

Book a call with our team of compliance experts today. Get a tailored compliance management service best suiting your business.