Overview of ISO 27001 Risk Management
ISO 27001 risk management is an internationally recognized standardized management system and its core is Information Security Management System (ISMS) under which Information Security Risk Assessment will be executed.
The core purpose of ISO 27001 is to ensure data security, company’s confidentiality and grants you an ability to bring customers in your trust that their information is completely secured with you with a process based approach along with fulfillment of all the requirements of information Security Management System (ISMS).
As far as Information Security Risk Assessment is concerned, it is defined as a process where an assessor will try to identify any risk existing in your current management system that may cause harm to the system, your products/ services or to your information confidentiality that may put your clients to potential risk.
Best Practices of ISO 27001 Risk Management
The framework of ISO 27001 risk management highlights following best practices of system security and risk management:
- Protection of Employee’s and Client’s information
- Effective risk management by managing system’s security
- To become 100% compliant with regulations and standards such European Union General Data Protection Regulation (EU GDPR)
- Company and Brand image protection
ISO 27001 Risk Management: Section 6.1.2
The section 6.1.2 of ISO 27001 states clauses about risk management procedure for security of information:
- Establishment of Risk management criteria and identification of potential risks to the security management system.
- Establishment of periodic risk assessments in order to accomplish consistency in quality of deliverable.
- Identification of potential risks that can threaten security of information security management system.
- Evaluation of information security system, recording and analysis of the results according to risks identification criteria.
Rock Solid Seven Foundation Steps to Effective ISO 27001 Risk Management
- Design Risk Management Methodology
ISO 27001 risk management methodology should be based on concrete security criteria, scale of risk, scenario and asset based risk assessment.
- Company’s Information Asset Listing
Valuable company’s information asset includes confidential information in the form of hard copy , soft copy, external provider, people and so on. Make an existing list of Company’s informational assets. If the list already exists then do a verification check if the list is updated with all the assets or not.
- Identification of Potential Threats and Risks
After identification of company’s information asset, the next significant step is to highlight all the possible potential risks that can be applied to each company’s information asset.
- Measure the Extent of Risk
Build a risk matrix in which list down all the risks involved, predict its likelihood, occurrence and severity. Assess the risk to confidentiality, integrity and availability of these assets.
- Risks Mitigation
Classify all the predicted risks into High, Medium and low priority. Devise a plan to mitigate, eliminate or substitute those risks with optimum solutions.
- Risks Reports Compilation
Compile the risks reports in which risk matrix with risks mitigation plans has been mentioned.
- Review and Monitoring of Plan
The basic requirement of ISO 27001 is to update (if needed), review and monitor the risk management plan from time to time in order to monitor the risks and its mitigation plan performance with rapid changing environment.
Other ISO standards for Risk Management
Following enlisted are the ISO standards that supports ISO 27001 in risk management approach:
- ISO 27005:2011 – Guidelines for risk management for information security
- ISO 31000:2009 – Basic Principles about Risk Management
- ISO 31010:2009 – Methodologies and Standardized Approach about Risk Assessment and its Techniques
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Top Key Benefits of ISO 27001 Implementation
Among numerous benefits of ISO 27001 implementation, here comes some top key benefits of ISO 27001:
- Competitive Marketing Edge
Having ISO 27001 being deeply embedded in your management system gives you a unique selling point (USP) to represent to clients. Plus it will help you to be different to your competitors when it comes to tender winning race. Your marketing team will definitely get an edge over marketplace competitors hence giving you more chances to enter to new business opportunities.
- Cost Effective Solution
A common myth exists in market that putting information security in your system gives you no financial gain which is totally wrong. Think of the financial loss that you may face due to leakage of confidential information of your business or about your clients’ business giving your brand reputation a smashing hit that is nearly impossible to get recovered.
Take this fact the other way around. Imagine the amount of money you could have saved if you could have somehow was able to prevent the confidential information compromise/leakage incident. Hence, prevention is better than cure.
- Better Business Management
ISO 27001 is a proven tool to get your business in the order just as you always wanted to have. But How? The guidelines of ISO 27001 helps in great extent to define and divide the roles and responsibilities among the team ensuring employees’ engagement to the next level making your journey towards success more systematic.
- Fulfillment of Quality Compliance
Want to have something which can give you quick “Return on Investment” then ISO 27001 compliance is just the right thing to do. Be it data protection, privacy and IT security, ISO 27001 caters to all the factors of compliance which makes you ultimately more trustworthy among customers, suppliers and vendors.
- Awareness on Risk Management Among Employees
Through various training and refresher sessions, the awareness level on risk management can ensure employees’ focus on better risk management. With focus on social engineering and tests to ensure employees have good understanding of ISO 27001, Management have been able to minimize the risk to the entire organization.
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