Between April 2023 and April 2024, 50% of all UK businesses experienced at least one cyber security breach or attack. For medium and large organisations, this number increased to 70% and 74% respectively.
Suffice to say, cyber security incidents are now commonplace. And that means prevention and mitigation practices must become commonplace, too.
This is what makes accredited information security management system (ISMS) frameworks so vital. In a world riddled with emerging and mutating threats, these guidelines offer a structured method for protecting your assets and customers and maintaining business as usual.
However, achieving framework compliance doesn’t come without its challenges.
In this blog, we’ll explore the ISO 27001 framework in particular. We’ll explain why the standard is so important, the challenges of completing audits manually, and how you can streamline the process via automation.
ISO 27001:2022 is one of the world’s best known standards for creating, implementing, maintaining and improving information security management systems (ISMS). By following the guidance outlined in the framework, organisations can stay risk-aware, proactively identify weaknesses in their systems, and improve their overall data security practices.
Maintaining compliance through periodic internal audits – as well as external audits and recertification – can benefit your organisation in a number of ways:
When preparing for an ISO audit, your organisation must work through a series of steps. For an internal audit, this involves reviewing your ISMS documentation, collecting evidence, performing tests and interviews, and creating an actionable report based on your findings.
Simple enough when written down, right? In practice, not so much.
When completing these tasks manually, you’re likely to encounter one or more of the following challenges:
If your auditing process is 100% manual, you increase the chances of human error within your reporting. This may be as small as an incomplete field within an assessment or as big as missing an entire assessment altogether.
To demonstrate your ISO 27001 compliance, you must present a series of ISMS records and documentation. If you don’t have a reliable method of collecting this information throughout the year (for example, whenever you assess a new vendor or supplier), you’ll likely find it difficult to locate everything you need when your next audit rolls around. Needless to say, this can make achieving compliance very difficult.
It’s all well and good telling your auditors that you’ve met the ISO 27001 requirements, but how can you prove it? Take training as an example. Showing your auditor an example of your cybersecurity training course may demonstrate intent. But to prove your employees have taken and passed this training, you’ll need to provide individual, time-stamped training records.
Your CIO may be eagerly prepared for your next ISO audit, but what about the rest of your team? If you use word-of-mouth to remind your employees of upcoming training courses and audit interviews, the chances are they may forget. This lack of cybersecurity awareness and audit preparedness could result in non-compliance.
ISO 27001 compliance requires everyone in your business to read, understand and accept the applicable ISMS policies. While you can share your policies and hope for the best, there’s often no way of guaranteeing policy acknowledgement unless you use a dedicated compliance tool.
Managing an audit entirely manually can be a tedious juggling act. When you’re busy focusing on what needs to be done next, it can be difficult to understand your overall progress and what you might have missed. With no way of tracking your efforts, you may fail to complete every obligation.
Needless to say, the challenges we listed above can make passing your ISO 27001 audits difficult. This is particularly the case if you have a small IT team with limited resources at your disposal.
So, to make the process as painless as possible for everyone involved, adopt automation wherever possible. When used correctly, automation can help you:
With a compliance automation tool, you can create and store standardised e-forms and checklists for most aspects of your ISO 27001 audit. This ensures you follow the appropriate steps every time you test your ISMS.
Take the work out of finding your ISO 27001 documentation. Automation streamlines the collection of your compliance evidence, including risk assessments, vendor assessments, incident reports, policy acknowledgement information and more.
This reduces the effort needed from your team, but can also increase information accuracy and speed up the overall audit preparation process.
At Claromentis, we harness our business process automation software, InfoCapture, to manage our ISO 27001 procedures and capture relevant information via e-forms. This includes:
By capturing evidence of these procedures via time-stamped, standardised e-forms, it’s simple enough to demonstrate compliance to ISO auditors.
Ensure your ISO 27001 policies are kept up to date year-round with automated notifications and workflows.
An automated compliance tool with built-in policy management capabilities will allow you to:
A digital workplace solution that provides internal communication, automation and e-learning functionality will help you improve employee preparedness and cyber security awareness.
For instance, with the full Claromentis digital workplace suite, you can:
A compliance management and automation tool will allow you to create compliance tasks, objects or projects, assign them to the relevant experts, and track their progress. With automated notifications and reminders, as well as a real-time dashboard of your overall efforts, you can ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
ISO 27001 audits needn’t be such a headache. With a helping hand from automation, you can streamline the process from beginning to end and keep your business compliant year after year.
Of course, before you can reach this stage, you’ll first need to choose the right compliance automation tool for the job.
When assessing your options, try to find a platform that provides:
These features should be non-negotiable.
However, if you’re eager to improve your overall ISO 27001 compliance efforts year-round, it may be worth adopting a broader digital workplace solution.
With a platform like Claromentis, you can create and distribute e-learning courses, push out ISO 27001 communications and announcements, and collect employee engagement and training statistics. Working in conjunction with your automated workflows and e-forms, these features can bolster your cyber security efforts and better prepare you for your internal and external audits.
For more information on choosing the right BPA platform for your unique needs, download our free automation strategy guide. It’s packed full of advice to help you plot your automation roadmap and narrow down your vendor shortlist.