High-Level Overview of ISO/IEC 27001

ISO/IEC 27001 is the international standard for Information Security Management Systems (ISMS). Its purpose is to help organizations protect sensitive information in a systematic, risk-based way.

Key Objectives

  • Ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information.

  • Provide a risk management framework to identify, assess, and treat information security risks.

  • Demonstrate compliance to stakeholders, regulators, and clients.

Core Requirements

  1. Context of the Organization – Understand internal/external issues, interested parties, and scope of the ISMS.

  2. Leadership & Governance – Top management commitment, security policy, roles and responsibilities.

  3. Planning – Risk assessment, risk treatment, objectives, continual improvement.

  4. Support – Resources, competence, awareness, communication, documented information.

  5. Operation – Risk management activities, control implementation, supplier/third-party considerations.

  6. Performance Evaluation – Monitoring, measurement, internal audits, management reviews.

  7. Improvement – Corrective actions, continual improvement of ISMS.

Annex A Controls (ISO/IEC 27001:2022)

Controls are grouped into four main themes (93 controls total):

  • Organizational controls (policies, risk management, supplier relationships).

  • People controls (training, access control, user responsibilities).

  • Physical controls (secure areas, equipment security, facility access).

  • Technological controls (encryption, logging, network security, monitoring).