TL;DR: Is ISO27001 easy or am I just too dumb to see the complexity?
Hi!
Just wanted to start some conversation on a standard that’s sorta kinda infamous where I’m currently at, the ISO27001 standard.
I got tasked with “polishing up an ISMS” for a company and while I can’t go into details, I got basically a control name (from 27002:2022) and a description of “what we need it to do.” Now that I got into it, I feel that I may be missing something. Most of their controls are “Limit access to server room” or “Make sure access is logged and not permanent.”
Like, the standard is not difficult reading, but if they can explain to ME how the controls should look in the end, what am I missing? Is there some extremely difficult part? Or can I just say “Just make the creds timeout after a month. Source: dude trust me?”
If you were tasked with implementing ISO27001, did you encounter any specific hurdles that I may not see from where I’m standing? The only thing I can see after I got through all the controls was a feeling that this will be more expensive on time for the security teams.
Thank you for coming to my TED(x) talk.
Personally, the toughest thing for me was justifying changes to the organisation and making sure any suggested changes are realistic for the maturity you’re dealing with. This may mean some recommendations aren’t best practice, but you can start moving the organisation in that direction, or even lay out a roadmap to make big changes more manageable and gradual.
As much as I would love to make hard and fast changes, this just isn’t feasible in most organisations (especially government).