5 Things Your ISMS Needs to Be Effective

What to do in any serious effort is the Information Security Management System (ISMS) – processes, documents, technology and people systems that help manage, monitor, audit and improve the security of your organization’s information. It helps you manage all your security practices in one place, consistently and cost-effectively.

The ISO 27001-compliant ISMS relies on regular risk assessment, so you will be able to identify and treat the security threats according to your organizational risk appetite and tolerance.

The current version of the ISO 27001 standard places emphasis on measuring the effectiveness of the ISMS, making it easier to ope-rationalize and helping to build a better business case for management.

Five important ISMS processes that must be measured to maintain an effective ISMS are:

1. IT and business alignment
   • Is IT information and IT security strategy bring value to business?
   • Is management committed to ensuring continuous input for information security and IT services strategies?
2. Information security risk management process
   • Are the IT processes addressing all relevant business risks?
   • Does the business feel that their risk-input is being covered?
   • Is the risk management process being carried out in a structured manner?
3. Compliance process
   • Do we adequately comply with the relevant safety, privacy, governance and obligation information?
   • Are the costs associated with achieving and maintaining compliance less than the business benefits
   • Have we managed to manage the risks being arrested, for example due to non-compliance incidents, or negative compliance assessments, or fail to appreciate new or changed compliance obligations?
4.  Awareness process
   • How do we make sure that the awareness efforts reach the relevant stakeholders/employees?
   • Have they learned something?
5. Audit process
   •  In addition to ensuring that internal audits are structured, we also need to identify how security positions change over time and our effectiveness rates relate to the escalation efforts arising from audit observation.
   • Is expenditure used to address non-compliance which reduces the number of non-compliance and security incidents?
   • It is also important to review the audit results from time to time to ensure the scope of the audit is directly related to the actual risk posture and to ensure that high-risk areas are addressed and areas with little or no critical observation are taken into account.

Feel free to contact E-SPIN for the solution for your information security management system (ISMS) and related end to end or point solution.