The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide To ISO 27001 Policies

ISO 27001 is the centerpiece of the ISO 27000 series of international standards. In brief, the framework, formally known as ISO/IEC 27001:2022, establishes guidelines for developing, implementing, and maintaining an Information Security Management System (ISMS). Doing so not only helps the organization demonstrate compliance with international data security standards but improves its security posture. 

Aligning your organizational controls and policies with the requirements of the ISO 27001 certification comes with a host of benefits—from securing assets and the business environment to enabling business and lending competitive advantage. In this blog, we explore the complete list of ISO 27001 policies and the steps to implement them.

What are ISO 27001 policies?

ISO 27001 policies are foundational documents defininig the organization’s protocol and information management practices that your ISMS is built on. And so, every policy undergoes meticulous definition, rigorous management reviews, approvals, and revisions to keep the ISMS updated. An organization’s policies are largely driven by business requirements, legal and legislative mandates, and regulatory requirements.  

ISO 27001 mandates that organizations maintain transparency and communicate with stakeholders, customers, and senior management about their policies. Organizations are often requested to have their policies furbished as a part of their contract requirements. 

List of ISO 27001 policies

The ISO 27001 certification audit process is a tedious one, a large chunk of which goes into policy creation and implementation. In this section, we discuss key ISO 27001 policies and give you an overview of what each one covers. 

Information Security Policy

In its essence, the information security policy lays down the foundational groundwork and stance for how the company manages information security. It covers basic principles, legalities, management commitment, security objectives, roles, and responsibilities with respect to information security.

Data Protection Policy

The data protection policy primarily ensures that organizational data has sufficient safeguards in place through the implementation of security controls that are in line with compliance and legal standards.

Data Retention Policy

The data retention policy defines the limitations regarding the storage, retention, and deletion of sensitive data collected by the organization within legal and operational requirements.

Access Control Policy

The primary aim of the access control policy is to ensure that access to organizational data and resources is granted only to personnel with authorized permissions and privileges. The policy covers key aspects such as user registration, authentication requirements, review of access and privileges, reporting, and external access control. 

Asset Management Policy

The asset management policy aims to enable the identification, protection, and management of key organizational assets. It covers key aspects throughout the asset lifecycle, namely, classification, allocation, inventory, ownership, and return.

Risk Management Policy

The aim of the risk management policy is to help an organization identify risks, assess and review impact, risk register, implement risk treatment plans, and report on security risks to key assets while understanding it’s risk appetite. 

Information Classification and Handling Policy

The information classification and handling policy is a key policy that defines how the organization classifies, stores, processes, backs up, transmits, and purges information. It also covers roles and responsibilities that employees need to be aware of to protect sensitive information.

Information Security Awareness and Training Policy

The information security awareness and training policy ensure that employees receive appropriate security and awareness training, are kept abreast with the risk, and know to respond to them as they arise. This policy additionally covers creating training plans and assessment modules for internal employees as well as external third parties.

Acceptable Use Policy

The acceptable use policy helps organizations to ensure internal employees and external stakeholders are aware of individual responsibility, the appropriate use of organizational assets related to information processing, intellectual property, reporting, and monitoring. 

Clear Screen and Clear Desk Policies

The purpose of the clear desk and clear screen policies are to prevent unauthorized access to internal systems, resources, and assets as well as the resulting loss or damage during and over standard working hours at the workplace. 

Remote Working Policy

The remote working policy helps organizations identify and mitigate security risks of remote work that are introduced through the usage of personal devices as well as set protocol on how information is collected, processed, and stored off-premise. The remote working policy covers aspects of device registration, firewalls, network security, remote access, owner responsibilities, and data backups.

Business Continuity Policy

The business continuity policy focuses primarily on restoring and maintaining business continuity in the face of disruptions or security incidents of any nature. The policy outlines elements of impact analysis, continuity testing, business continuity plans, recovery and restoration, incident management, disaster recovery plans, and escalation.

Here is a sample incident management policy you can download:

Backup Policy

An organization’s backup policy outlines the protocol that employees should follow in order to prevent any loss of data. It entails procedures that come into effect when disruptions occur and highlights tactics that help with conduct, test, and deploy backup instances to restore business continuity.

Malware and Antivirus Policy

The malware and antivirus policy helps organizations educate employees about viruses and malware as well as how to mitigate damage as a result of such threats. In essence, the malware and antivirus policy covers details such as acceptable software usage, system configuration management, antivirus software specifications, security awareness, integrity, network intrusion, etc.

Change Management Policy

The aim of the change management policy is to facilitate smooth operational transitions and mitigate the impact of risks posed by carrying out changes in the company. The change management policy details everything from change requests, classification, approvals, prioritization, security risk assessment, impact assessment, version control, testing, rollbacks as well as aspects of emergency change management and reporting.

Third-Party Supplier Security Policy

A company’s third-party security policy specifically focuses on ensuring third-party vendors and registered, onboarded, and implement sufficient safeguards in place throughout their lifecycle. It also ensures that third-parties collect, process, transmit, and store data in a secure manner and in accordance with compliance requirements. 

Continual Improvement Policy

One of the crucial elements of ISO 27001 standard is its focus on continuous improvement. The continual improvement policy lays emphasis on suitability which is facilitated by periodically reviewing the effectiveness and adequacy of the information security and the implemented ISMS.

Logging and Monitoring Policy

The logging and monitoring policy enables the identification and management of risk systems through thorough audit logging and monitoring procedures. The policy covers all aspects of event and activity data, its collection, logging, processing, analysis, and storage as well as maintenance of access control and protection of such data.  

Network Security Management Policy

The network security management policy is a security policy document specifically designed to safeguard network infrastructure as well as the data nested in them. It also provides guidelines on network controls, segregation, access, physical devices, locations, and secure processing of data. 

Information Transfer Policy

The aim of the information transfer policy is to ensure an organization follows the right protocol when data is in transit, ie, when information is being transferred internally or externally. The policy covers data transfer methods, encryption methods, and loss of information. 

Secure Development Policy

The secure development policy is a vital policy that ensures information security best practices are ingrained throughout the development lifecycle. Broadly, the policy covers topics related to segregation of environments, coding guidelines, development code repository, approvals, code reviews, testing, test data management, and moving code to production.

Physical and Environmental Security Policy

The physical and environmental security policy primarily lays emphasis on the prevention of unauthorized physical access to the organization’s data as well as its data processing facilities. It covers key topics such as physical security, employee access, network access control, visitor access, etc.

Cryptographic Key Management Policy

The cryptographic key management policy aims to ensure that encryption keys are safeguarded throughout their lifecycles—from generation, distribution, storage, escrow and backup while also ensuring accountability and regular audit management. It also lays down the protocol for when keys are compromised and how to recover them.

Cryptographic Control and Encryption Policy

The cryptographic control and encryption policy outlines the processes involved in the effective implementation of encryption while safeguarding the integrity and confidentiality of sensitive information. It includes guidelines on encryption algorithms, web and cloud encryption, wireless encryption, email encryption, cardholder data, data in motion, database encryption, mobile and laptop encryption, etc.

Document and Record Policy

The aim of a document and record policy is to help organizations keep track of documents and records within the Information Security Management System. It lays down foundational guidelines for creating and managing documents while ensuring the availability, security, confidentiality, and integrity of documentation. It also defines how an organization needs to conduct key tasks such as version control, approval, and classification of key documents.

Understanding policy requirements of ISO 27001 clause 5.2

As per Clause 5.2 of the ISO/IEC 27001:2022, top management is responsible for establishing an information security policy that:

• Is suitable to the purpose of the organization (ISO 27001 Clause 5.2a)
• Provides the framework for setting information security control objectives or includes information security objectives (ISO 27001 Clause 5.2b)
• Includes a commitment to fulfill applicable requirements related to information security (ISO 27001 Clause 5.2c)
• Includes a commitment towards the continual improvement of the ISMS (ISO 27001 Clause 5.2d)
• Is accessible as documented information (ISO 27001 Clause 5.2e)
• Is shared within the organization (ISO 27001 Clause 5.2f)
• Is made accessible to interested parties as appropriate (ISO 27001 Clause 5.2g)

A nine-step guide to implementing ISO 27001 policies