| Scope and covered activity | ISO/IEC 27035 structures information security incident management from preparation and detection through response and lessons learned. | ISO 22301 is a certifiable BCMS requirements standard for continuity scope, BIA, strategies, plans, exercises, monitoring, audit, and improvement. | Write the scope memo so teams can see when ISO/IEC 27035 is the implementation structure, when ISO 22301 controls the obligation or assurance question, and where evidence can be reused without changing the source test. |
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| Who must act | ISO/IEC 27035 ownership should sit with the team that can operate the relevant management system, control process, risk method, supplier relationship, incident process, privacy process, or AI governance scope. | ISO 22301 ownership should sit with BCMS-specific roles such as executive sponsor, business continuity manager, process owner, crisis-management lead, recovery-plan owner, internal auditor, and management-review approver. | Do not copy owners from one side to the other; map accountable owners, reviewers, and approvers separately. |
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| Trigger or threshold | ISO/IEC 27035 work starts when an incident, control gap, supplier change, certification readiness check, or management review creates a need for incident-management action. | ISO 22301 work starts when continuity scope, a business impact analysis, recovery strategy, exercise, or plan needs to be defined, tested, or updated. | Use the trigger to route intake: incident-management work to the left, continuity-planning work to the right, and separate any shared evidence only after the owner, scope, and date line up. |
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| Core obligations | ISO/IEC 27035 requires practical governance: scope, roles, risk or impact decisions, evidence, operating cadence, monitoring, review, and improvement. | ISO 22301 expects its own required or recommended outcomes, which may include legal duties, assurance criteria, control objectives, profiles, or risk methodology. | Translate both sides into a single task register only after labeling which requirement or guidance source each task satisfies. |
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| Evidence and records | ISO/IEC 27035 evidence should show the process operating: owners, decisions, registers, control records, test results, review minutes, audit samples, or corrective actions. | ISO 22301 evidence should match its own proof model, such as regulatory records, attestation evidence, framework profiles, risk analysis, or contractual assurance. | Build an evidence matrix with one row per claim and columns for source, owner, artifact, date, review trigger, and reuse permission. |
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| Timing and cadence | ISO/IEC 27035 timing follows implementation, audit, certification, review, supplier, incident, or change cycles rather than a single universal deadline. | ISO 22301 timing follows the legal effective date, assurance period, framework version, contract milestone, or publication lifecycle that applies to that side. | Track dates separately so an ISO review cycle does not get mistaken for a statutory deadline or assurance reporting period. |
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| Enforcement or assurance route | ISO/IEC 27035 is usually tested through certification audits, internal audits, customer assurance, management review, or governance review, depending on how the organization adopts it. | ISO 22301 may be enforced, audited, attested, assessed, or used voluntarily depending on whether it is law, assurance criteria, a framework, or guidance. | Separate audit readiness from legal compliance and from voluntary framework maturity so executives see the actual consequence of gaps. |
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| Overlap and reuse | ISO/IEC 27035 can supply reusable management-system evidence, control operation records, risk decisions, and review outputs. | ISO 22301 can reuse some of that evidence when the control, process, risk, or duty is genuinely the same. | Reuse evidence only after checking scope, actor, date, data type, service, supplier, and acceptance criteria; otherwise keep separate records. |
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| Practical decision rule | Use ISO/IEC 27035 when the main work is building, operating, reviewing, or proving a management-system or standards-based control process. | Use ISO 22301 when the main work is satisfying that side's law, assurance route, framework outcome, risk method, or external reporting expectation. | If both apply, keep the primary obligation visible and use the other side as supporting structure, not as a substitute source. |
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