Obtaining an ISO 27001 certificate implies your organization has built an elaborate information security management system (ISMS) that safeguards sensitive data from numerous threats. The only problem is that those threats evolve constantly. If you want your ISMS to stay aligned with the ISO 27001 requirements in the long run, you need to develop a realistic strategy to monitor and maintain compliance.

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We’ve prepared this guide to help you learn about all relevant audits and assessments you should perform to maintain ongoing compliance with ISO 27001. We’ll also discuss:

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• The frequency of ISO 27001 audits
• Top best practices to help you prepare for the renewal process efficiently

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How often is the ISO 27001 certificate renewed?

An initial certification audit grants you the ISO 27001 certificate. Post-certification, you’ll need to undergo surveillance audits in years two and three. These audits help ensure that all relevant controls remain effectively implemented over time, allowing you to retain your certificate.

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In year three, you must complete a recertification audit. If successful, your certificate will be renewed for an additional three years. Each certification cycle spans three years, enabling compliance teams to establish a repeatable recertification process.

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Besides these scheduled external audits, ISO 27001 requires you to conduct annual internal audits. This internal audit isn’t verified by a certification body—it’s primarily intended to help you identify and remediate any compliance gaps before the external audit.

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{{cta_withimage2="/cta-blocks"}}  | ISO 27001 compliance checklist

7 best practices for maintaining ISO 27001 compliance

We have compiled a list of industry best practices to help you tailor your workflows for ongoing ISO 27001 compliance. These best practices can work for both internal and external ISO 27001 audits:

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1. Schedule surveillance and internal audits in advance
2. Perform regular security reviews
3. Conduct vendor reviews
4. Assess your risk profile at regular intervals
5. Conduct management reviews
6. Monitor personnel compliance
7. Centralize compliance documentation

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Go through the following sections for a quick roundup of these best practices.

1. Schedule surveillance and internal audits in advance

A surveillance audit is less time-consuming than the initial certification audit because it has a narrower scope of requirements tested.

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A proactive way to prepare for surveillance audits is to schedule them in advance. The goal is to avoid haphazard control and policy reviews, and other activities that might impact your ISO 27001 compliance status. You should also give your team plenty of time to map out any additional compliance activities and communicate the task flows to the relevant team members.

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An internal ISO 27001 audit is an essential part of a successful surveillance audit. That’s why you should schedule it before surveillance audits. Unlike certification audits, an internal audit is not explicitly required to be performed by a third-party auditor. 

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Instead, you can employ someone from your organization who is knowledgeable, has experience navigating ISO 27001 certification, and has independence from your ISMS. If you do not have these resources internally, you can also engage a third party with ISO 27001 competence to conduct an internal audit assessment instead.

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Some organizations also prefer having an independent auditor conduct their internal audits for a more objective assessment.

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2. Perform regular security reviews

The idea behind frequent security reviews is to help you uncover any vulnerabilities or concerns that cause misalignment with ISO 27001 requirements. A comprehensive security review is not a single process but a combination of multiple granular checks, such as:

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• Access reviews
• Technical vulnerability scans
• Incident response tests

The frequency of security reviews varies depending on your program's maturity and the size of the IT infrastructure, but you should consider conducting them more frequently than less. Some activities, like access reviews, should be more frequent (at least quarterly). So, a part of maintaining ISO 27001 would be conducting the necessary security review activities throughout the year.

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Security reviews require a complete overview of your IT assets, so you’ll want to develop a robust inventory that centralizes all asset-related information. While creating an asset inventory seems like tedious busywork, you’ll find many compliance solutions today that automatically maintain an inventory log for you.

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While making your asset inventory, you should also consider shadow IT, which implies that your employees might be using software that doesn’t adhere to ISO 27001 without your knowledge. Such issues might come up during the audit, and to prevent any surprises, you can use a software solution that uncovers shadow IT with the help of integrations.

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{{cta_withimage22="/cta-blocks"}}  | Audit ready checklist

3. Conduct vendor reviews

ISO 27001 heavily focuses on supplier relationships and third-party risk management (TPRM) in general, so staying compliant requires ongoing management of your partner network. You must conduct annual vendor security reviews that require oversight processes, such as:

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• Security documentation collection and review
• Vendor risk assessments and and related vendor risk scoring
• Onboarding and offboarding reviews

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The key piece of documentation to review is your vendor agreements. If needed, update your agreements with additional security terms to see that related risks are addressed. Such updates might be necessary if a vendor’s risk profile has expanded due to new partnerships or considerable changes in their IT infrastructure.

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It may also be a good idea to review vendor risk scores to account for any changes in each vendor’s security and risk profile. For example, if a vendor has adopted new software that requires access to your data, you may consider changing the risk score to reflect this. Similarly, any changes to a vendor’s security posture would require you to tailor your risk mitigation strategy accordingly.

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4. Assess your risk profile at regular intervals

Annual risk assessments are a key component of ongoing ISO 27001 compliance. After understanding your organization’s risk profile and appetite, you should perform regular assessments to uncover and mitigate new threats.

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The scope of your assessment should cover:

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• Risk scenarios and their owners
• Inherent risk scores including their related likelihood and impact levels
• Risk treatment plans
• Residual risk scores and their related likelihood and impact levels

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Other supporting documentation for the risk scenario and identified treatment activitiesAs a part of this process, you should also review your risk management program and its key policies and procedures to identify opportunities for improvement. Assess your risk treatment strategies to make sure they stay aligned with your organizational risk appetite and objectives.

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For example, you might’ve accepted risks that are no longer tolerable due to their impact on your sensitive data. In this case, you may want to adopt a strategy to reduce, transfer, or avoid the risk entirely.

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5. Conduct management reviews

Your ISMS will be considered robust if it continuously performs as intended without bottlenecks. That’s why ISO 27001 requires regular management reviews to ensure the smooth functioning of your ISMS. This is a high-level review that should track the implementation of the ISMS according to ISO 27001 standards and check for any deviations that should be remedied.

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Here’s the key information your management review should gather:

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• Previous management review meeting action follow up
• Discussion of the outcomes/status of previously agreed on actions
• Changes to risk, security/threat landscape or other ISMS functions since last meeting
• ISMS performance
  
  • Non-conformities and corrective actions
  • Monitoring and measurement results
  • Audit results
  • Business objective fulfillment and alignment
• Interested parties feedback
  
  • ISMS stakeholder feedback or updates
• Risk management results
  
  • Updates on risk management activities and effectiveness
• Continuous improvement
• Management decisions re: proposed/required changes to ISMS

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A management review should be performed at least bi-annually so any relevant controls can be introduced earlier, preferably before the surveillance audit. It’s typically conducted by senior management, which gives them the opportunity to understand the organization’s ISMS needs and participate in long-term changes if necessary.

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{{cta_withimage2="/cta-blocks"}}  | ISO 27001 compliance checklist

6. Monitor personnel compliance

After establishing the security policies required for ISO 27001 certification, you need to make sure your employees adhere to them ongoingly. You can do this though:

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• Regular compliance training
• Employee interviews
• Tabletop exercises simulating non-compliance scenarios or security concerns

Ideally, you’ll establish an organization-wide culture of compliance that encourages employees to stay aligned with defined ISO 27001 policies. For greater effectiveness, get department heads on-board with the compliance requirements so that they can oversee the implementation workflows closely.

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Another effective way to ensure adherence to the defined standards is to monitor team members’ work devices from a security perspective. It’s particularly important to enforce such monitoring if you have team members working from home as it can increase their likelihood of connecting to unsecured networks or otherwise compromising information security.

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Effective employee offboarding is another important security aspect. It’s best to formalize the process through a set of activities you’ll apply to each employee who stops working at your organization.

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Some of the main action items for security-aware offboarding include:

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• Revoking access to your systems
• Changing shared passwords
• Retrieving company devices
• Blocking remote access

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7. Centralize compliance documentation

During surveillance and recertification audits, your auditor will need to see evidence of your controls’ effectiveness and alignment with ISO 27001. While they will perform some fieldwork, much of this evidence will also come from the available ISMS documentation and related deliverables.

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To expedite the audit, make sure all such documentation is easily accessible from a centralized hub. Relying on disparate systems like email chains and spreadsheets is not productive for maintaining any long-term compliance. That’s mainly because manual evidence management systems typically suffer from:

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• Poor visibility of real-time security information
• Misplaced compliance data
• Prolonged audits due to extended evidence collection and the inherent back and forth

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For a complete overview of your security controls and compliance documentation, you should use a capable compliance platform like Vanta. The platform leverages AI, automation, and integrations to streamline repetitive evidence collection activities. It can maintain data about relevant evidence, controls, and gaps in one place, making it easy to stay compliant ongoingly.

{{cta_testimonial12="/cta-blocks"}} | Acme Technology customer story

Enable ongoing ISO 27001 compliance with Vanta

Vanta is a comprehensive trust management platform that helps you maintain ISO 27001 controls and workflows effortlessly. It automates up to 80% of ISO 27001 compliance processes, leaving your team with more time to fill compliance gaps and improve security workflows.

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The platform’s dedicated ISO 27001 product maps to the latest version of the framework, ISO 27001:2022. It can significantly reduce your compliance timeframe through features like:

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• Checklists and templates for defining and implementing your ISMS scope and identifying risks and vulnerabilities
• Streamlined access review features
• Comprehensive risk management built around ISO 27005 guidelines
• Centralized documentation and automated evidence collection supported by over 375 integrations
• Built-in resources like templates and tests

Vanta can also connect you to compliance professionals via its service partner network—they can help you track and achieve ISO 27001 compliance faster with niche guidance.

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For a hands-on overview of Vanta’s ISO 27001 product, schedule a custom product demo.

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{{cta_simple2="/cta-blocks"}} | ISO 27001 product page

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