Information security is the practice of protecting information of a particular entity. Information could be digital or physical. There are several frameworks and standards available, which addresses the security of information. ISACA COBIT, NIST 800 series and ISO/IEC 27000 series are some of them. ISO 27000 series plays a large role in providing a framework to protect information.

International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a standard-setting body. International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) is the standard-setting organization on electrical and electronic technologies. ISO and IEC jointly published a series of standards called ISO/IEC 27000 for the protection of information. Among the ISO/IEC 27000 series, the ISO 27001 standard describes the summary of information security best practices.

Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA) are the main pillars of information security. If one of those pillars is compromised, the information is considered unprotected. The ISO 27001 standard addresses the protection of all three pillars of the information security. Information can be compromised through many ways, and they can be protected by many ways. Having procedures, enforcing passwords, encrypting data etc.; are methods of protection information.

In practice, protecting a single asset (Ex: Laptop) is easy. Organizations may have much information containing assets, which needs protection. To protect the whole organization, you need a system. There comes the ISO 27001 standard, which defines a system called Information Security Management System (ISMS). There are so many benefits of having ISMS, but some of the main benefits are;

1. Marketing Advantage

In the competitive market, it is very hard to get clients. People look for differentiations and benefits of competitors when selecting a particular company. The ISO 27001 certification is definitely a very powerful selling point in the market. If a company handles or keeps client/customer information, certifying with ISO 27001 is definitely going to get them more businesses. Every industry can implement ISO 27001 to protect their information. BPO, Health, Finance and IT are some of the industries which has the necessity of implementation ISO 27001.

2. Accountability and Structure

Since companies grow very fast, the processes and the structure of the companies also grow. There comes a huge problem of taking accountability. Questions like, Who is approving this? Who has to answer for this? Who handles this? is a huge problem in some of the larger companies. ISO 27001 makes your organization in a structure where every asset and every process has accountability. This makes the work easy and quick.

3. Security and Compliance

Implementing ISO 27001 makes you enforce controls over identified risks and potential risks. This makes your organization’s information secure. All the information will be handled in a way where leakages a minimized. This prevents the compromise on the CIA. ISO 27001 makes your organization to align with major regulations on information protection.

It actually defends your organization agains the evolving security threats. That way it ISO 27001 aids the top management to have an overall idea about the company in-terms of information security.

Implementing ISO 27001 in your organization involves many tasks. We have spoken about it in one of our blogs. Obtaining the ISO/IEC 27001 certification is not just having another certification. It brings you many benefits and may reduce unnecessary expense to your organization.

EncryptAsia is one of the pioneer organizations in Sri Lanka which consults organizations in implementing ISO 27001. Feel free to contact us to get any kind of support regarding ISO 27001.