ISO/IEC 27001 Compliance

First establish what the ISMS covers and who is accountable. Clause 4.3 requires a documented scope that considers internal and external issues, relevant interested-party requirements, and interfaces and dependencies with other organizations. The standard does not prescribe a list of products, sites, or technologies to include, but the boundary must be clear enough to apply and evaluate the ISMS.

ISO/IEC 27001:2022/Amd 1:2024 also requires the organization to determine whether climate change is a relevant issue and notes that relevant interested parties can have climate-change requirements. Record the conclusion and its effect on the ISMS when relevant; the amendment does not make a climate control universally mandatory.

Leadership evidence should show that top management established the information security policy, assigned and communicated relevant responsibilities and authorities, made needed resources available, and integrated ISMS requirements into organizational processes.

Clause 6.1.2 requires maintained risk criteria, including acceptance criteria and criteria for performing assessments. The process must produce consistent, valid, and comparable results; identify risks associated with loss of confidentiality, integrity, and availability within scope; identify risk owners; analyze consequences and realistic likelihood; determine risk levels; and evaluate priorities. Retain both the process and its results.

Clause 6.1.3 then requires appropriate treatment options, all controls needed to implement them, an Annex A comparison, the SoA, and a treatment plan. Risk owners must approve the plan and accept the residual information security risks. Clause 8 requires the plan to be implemented and the treatment results retained.

The SoA is a required output of risk treatment. It must contain the necessary controls, justification for including them, whether they are implemented, and justification for excluding any Annex A control. Necessary controls can be designed by the organization or selected from any source; Annex A is used to check that none were overlooked.

Keep the SoA aligned with the treatment plan and actual implementation. Owner and evidence-location fields are useful governance additions, but ISO/IEC 27001 does not prescribe a particular SoA template or require those fields by name.

Evidence must match the applicable requirement and the scoped process. Clause 8.1 requires enough documented information to provide confidence that operational processes ran as planned. Clause 9.1 requires evidence of monitoring and measurement results. Evidence for selected controls depends on the control design; access reviews, supplier assessments, training records, test results, logs, tickets, and approvals are examples, not a mandatory universal set.

Clause 7.5 requires ISMS documented information to be suitable, available when needed, and protected. As applicable, the organization must address distribution, access, retrieval, use, storage, preservation, change control, retention, and disposition.

Internal audits at planned intervals must determine whether the ISMS conforms to the organization's own requirements and ISO/IEC 27001, and whether it is effectively implemented and maintained. The audit program must cover frequency, methods, responsibilities, planning, and reporting; each audit needs criteria and scope, and auditor selection must protect objectivity and impartiality.

Top management must review the ISMS at planned intervals. Required inputs include previous actions, relevant context and interested-party changes, performance feedback, interested-party feedback, risk-assessment results, treatment-plan status, and improvement opportunities. Retain the resulting decisions on improvement opportunities and needed ISMS changes.

When a nonconformity occurs, react to it, address consequences as applicable, evaluate and address causes, review corrective-action effectiveness, and change the ISMS if needed. Retain the nature of the nonconformity, actions taken, and corrective-action results.