The Top 10 Considerations When Creating Information Security Policies for ISO 27001 Compliance

The ISO 27001 standard provides organisations with a framework for building, managing, maintaining, and continually improving a robust information security management system (ISMS). With an ISO 27001-compliant ISMS, business leaders can ensure their organisation’s approach to information security aligns with the standard’s best practices, reducing the risk and impact of cyber incidents.

An ISMS comprises policies, procedures, and controls encompassing how a business manages sensitive data. Each policy must include a specific scope and should be designed to direct staff, stakeholders, and suppliers to behave in a manner proportional to associated risks. An access control policy, for example, should define how your organisation ensures appropriate access to information networks and systems is provided in line with identified requirements—usually the ‘need to know’ principle.

What should you consider when creating your information security policies for ISO 27001 compliance? We look at the top 10 considerations.

1. The Critical Role of Policies in ISO 27001 Compliance

Your business’s ISO 27001 policies include everything from the central information security policy to the remote working policy. Crucially, these policies form the foundations of ISO 27001 compliance upon which the rest of your ISMS is built, defining how your employees, stakeholders and suppliers behave regarding information security. Having solid foundations is vital to success.

2. Alignment with Your Business Objectives

The ISO 27001 standard emphasises that “a suitable, adequate and effective ISMS provides assurance to the organisation’s management and other interested parties that their information and other associated assets are kept reasonably secure and protected against threats and harm.” 

Your comprehensive set of ISO 27001 policies should outline the security measures your business is taking to:

• Secure information assets
• Identify, assess and treat risk
• Proactively prevent cyber incidents.

Implementing ISO 27001 policies as part of a robust ISMS can protect your business’s reputation, unlock growth in new sectors or markets and assure customers that your organisation is securely managing their information.

3. Comprehensive Risk Management

Risk assessment for ISO 27001 involves identifying risks to each information asset in your organisation and choosing how to address each risk by treating, tolerating, transferring or terminating the source of risk. 

Your business’s risk management and information security policies are intrinsically linked. Risk assessments should inform the policies you choose to implement so that they are targeted, effective and aligned with the risks your business needs to address. 

4. Clear, Concise, Comprehensive Policies

Your policies should state how your organisation manages and protects information in line with three key information security properties: confidentiality, integrity and availability (CIA).

Robust ISO 27001 policies should include:

• A clearly defined scope and policy purpose
• A statement outlining the policy objectives
• A description of the policy rules
• Employee and stakeholder roles and responsibilities in line with the policy
• Consequences of non-compliance.

5. Employee Engagement and Security Awareness

Successful ISO 27001 compliance relies on an organisation-wide culture of security awareness and internal policy adoption. ISO 27001 Annex A.6.3 requires your organisation to implement employee information security and privacy awareness, education and training. 

It’s important to foster engagement and understanding of your organisation’s policies using your training scheme, so everyone in your business is aware of their information security responsibilities and why your policies are vital to success. 

Learning management platforms were the most effective method of improving skills and awareness (35%) used by respondents in our State of Information Security Report 2024, followed by external training providers (32%).

6. Defining Roles and Responsibilities

Your leadership team, senior technical staff, and lead implementers will have higher levels of information security responsibility than most of your employees. For example, these team members are more likely to be assigned risk ownership responsibilities. 

You can ensure organisation-wide employee awareness of roles and responsibilities by including this information in your employment terms and conditions or code of conduct. The induction process is also an excellent area to define information security roles and responsibilities, allowing you to assign specific policies to read based on an employee’s team or role.

7. Implementing Effective Access Controls

An access control policy is a foundational element of an ISMS. It states how you manage employee, stakeholder, and supplier authorisation. Your business’s approach to its access control policy defines how you protect sensitive information. 

For example, ensuring access rights are given according to the principles of ‘need to know’, ‘deny by default’ and ‘least privilege’ means that nobody in your organisation or supply chain is authorised to view any information outside the requirements of their role.

8. Establishing a Robust Incident Response Plan

A robust incident management policy should ensure quick, effective, consistent and orderly responses to security incidents. You should define the procedures for incident response planning in advance and ensure that all incidents receive the same approach: assess, respond, learn, resolve and archive. 

Information security controls also form the basis of a robust incident response plan, such as A.8.15 logging, A.8.16 monitoring activities, and A. 5.28 evidence collection to ensure you can review incidents and mitigate the risk of future similar incidents.

9. Continuous Monitoring and Policy Review

Continuous improvement is a staple of the ISO 27001 framework, and part of this involves showing you’re continuously monitoring system performance and identifying vulnerabilities. By ensuring policy owners regularly review your information security policies, for example every six or 12 months, you can confirm they remain effective and relevant, or update them in line with changes within your organisation.  

The ISMS.online platform makes this process easy and pain-free – just set up your desired review interval, and the platform will automatically remind the policy owner when the next policy review is due.

10. Improving Information Security Compliance with ISMS.online Compliance Software

By using the ISMS.online platform, you can streamline your information security policy development, deployment, and management, saving valuable time and resources. The platform includes templated policy packs so you can easily adopt, adapt, and add relevant policies to your ISMS as required by your business goals. 

Real-time compliance tracking helps you enhance policy adoption internally. Automated reminders are sent to staff, stakeholders, and suppliers to remind them of their policy reading requirements without you having to chase them by email or over Teams, enhancing your compliance without the hard work. Policy packs can also be viewed on mobile, so your team can read them on the go.

Align Your Information Security Policies with ISO 27001

Information security policies comprise a significant portion of ISO 27001 compliance; ensuring your organisation has implemented the right policies to protect your information is vital to certification. Discover how the ISMS.online platform makes ISO 27001 compliance easy – from providing policy templates out of the box to boosting internal policy adoption with compliance tracking. 

Unlock your compliance success with ISMS.online – book your demo today.