ISO 27001 promotes a holistic approach to information security; vetting people, policies, and technology, assessing cyber-resilience, operational excellence, and risk management. However, manual assessments are time-consuming, prone to missing actual performance gaps, and often lag regulatory updates. The solution is to adopt an automated ISO 27001 assessment tool to ensure assets are protected while maintaining compliance.
State of ISO 27001 Assessment Automation
Automation empowers organizations to improve speed, accuracy, and cost vs. manual assessments. Automating the assessment process can eliminate hundreds of hours of manual work executing audits and generating certification reports. ISO 27011 assessment automation further helps to identify and mitigate security gaps while adhering to a documented framework to report the results.
Switching to automated assessments provides an objective analysis, mapping information security to framework components. By integrating with your current tech stack, the right assessment testing and threat exposure management platform can monitor your security environment for ISO compliance.
Leveraging Automation Tools for ISO 27001 Assessments
In short, automation streamlines and simplifies the ISO assessment process in several ways:
- Control testing: Execute scheduled tests on ISO 27011 controls, providing objective analysis. Automated platforms can identify gaps and prioritize them for remediation.
- Evidence collection: Centralization of documents, policies, control data, and audit evidence in standardized forms. Automated platforms can also contain workflows to allow collaborative evidence review.
- Report generation: Automatically compiling assessment data into reports for both internal and external audiences, assuring accuracy and consistency much faster than traditional methods.
SightGain automates the assessment process and provides continuous monitoring of performance against current threats. By mapping controls against the ISO 27001 framework, you get verifiable evidence of control compliance based on real-world attacks. SightGain also provides updates as standards evolve and can provide monitoring and reporting on multiple security frameworks, including NIST 800-53, MITRE ATT&CK, CMMC, CSF, Zero Trust, and more.
SightGain works in a four-step process:
- Test existing controls against real-world threats
- Measure the performance of security technology, processes, and personnel
- Analyze the results to identify performance across ISO 27001 controls
- Report results and provide recommendation to address any issues
ROI of Assessment Automation
Automating ISO 27001 provides a significant return on investment (ROI). Not only does it keep you in compliance and secure your networks, but SightGain can reduce the amount of time necessary to manage the assessment process.
It’s not uncommon to see organizations that can cut their assessment time in half and reduce business costs by up to 90% compared to traditional assessments.
The Future of ISO 27001
Point-in-time ISO 27001 assessments are no longer effective. While such audits are important for certification, compliance must be more than a checklist item otherwise it’s just a non-value added cost. Security professionals understand that compliance does not equate to security. Unfortunately, most frameworks focus on information security systems and process models, but may overlook deeper aspects of the technical infrastructure, systems, and personnel that make up your environment — the places cybercriminals often tend to exploit. Automated ISO 27001 assessments save time, money, and provide you with true visibility into your security posture.
Contact SightGain today for a one-on-one demo and let us show you how automated assessments provide a better solution.
