If you’ve spent any length of time reading about the internationally accepted security framework laid out in ISO 27001, you’ve likely come across the term ISMS or Information Security Management System. You may wonder, though; what is the ISMS specifically, how do you set one up, and what does it do for your business? Let’s talk about it.

What is an ISMS?

An ISMS is an Information Security Management System, but unlike what the name might imply, it’s not really a “system” you can purchase out of the box and have ready to go once you run through a few settings. It’s a system in the traditional sense, an organization-wide set of policies, rules, procedures, and controls that holistically combine into a framework or system that secures information according to the CIA triad of Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability.

The overall goal of an ISMS is to minimize business and data risk, maintain business continuity of operations, and limit the impact of any potential breach of information security through proactive, active, and reactive procedures.

Taken all together, an ISMS is a combination of various elements, including but not limited to:

• Employee behavior and training.
• Policies that govern employee behavior.
• Policies that mandate handling and securing of data.
• Processes for managing data and security.
• Active and passive security monitoring.
• Security controls and their implementation.

One business can actually have more than one ISMS, as well. You might have an ISMS aimed at protecting customer data, an ISMS aimed at protecting more sensitive CUI from the government, or a more comprehensive total ISMS that covers everything your business does.

Note that the ISMS framework is created by and managed by ISO 27001; while similar setups exist for US Government contractor information security and the control of governmental CUI, they aren’t typically referred to as an ISMS in these cases.

How Does an ISMS Work?

An ISMS is a systematic framework for managing information and digital security throughout your organization. In many ways, it’s similar to frameworks such as FedRAMP and CMMC, but since it stems from ISO 27001, it’s generally broader and more applicable to international areas of business.

Creating and managing an ISMS is a multi-step process. It involves identifying the risks that your business and your information might face, the steps you’ve already taken to secure that information, the steps you still need to take, a plan of action to react to any breaches that might occur, and a list of the individuals within your organization who are responsible for any given element of the ISMS process.

All of this is determined through an analysis of the official ISO 27001 documentation provided by ISO/IEC. Once implemented, you also must pass an official audit to achieve full certification. Only once this has been achieved can you be said to have a valid ISMS in place.

It can be important to recognize that an ISMS is not the best possible security. It’s actually a lot closer to the lowest acceptable level of security. There are many frameworks, from HIPAA to financial regulations and government SECRET and above classifications, which stipulate even stricter information controls. An ISMS is the lowest step above casual and non-regulated security, effectively.

What Are the Components of an ISMS?

An ISMS is built out of several elements, each of which is important and needs to work in conjunction with the rest.

Management support and buy-in. Without the people at the top of your organization buying into and supporting the ISMS framework, you can never implement it in a satisfactory way. Your senior management needs to set the standard for control of information, and provide the resources necessary to establish and maintain the ISMS.

Robust documentation of policies, procedures, and processes. An ISMS is a system, in the traditional sense of the word, an accumulation of policies and processes that combine into a mechanism that can handle both daily operations and one-time events. All of this needs to be robustly documented, both for record-keeping purposes and so that the guidance is there for employees to check and follow. It’s also important to have this central record of what is and isn’t true in the ISMS so that assumptions can be challenged.

Additionally, the core documentation is a key part of maintenance. As best practices, the digital landscape, and the rules and regulations change, so too must your documentation and your processes, to ensure that the ISMS adapts and evolves over time.

Continuous monitoring and improvement. CONMON is a familiar concept for most security frameworks. This isn’t like establishing 2FA or setting secure passwords in a do-and-forget setup; an ISMS is a living, growing, adapting system. Continuous monitoring is necessary to ensure that policies and procedures are followed, that no breaches have occurred, and that improvements are made to the system as necessary on an ongoing basis.

What Are the Benefits of Implementing an ISMS?

Implementing an ISMS can be a lot of work, so it’s worthwhile for a business to evaluate the potential benefits before spending the time and money necessary to put it into action to make sure it’s worthwhile. So, what are the benefits of an ISMS?

It enables your business to meet data protection and cybersecurity goals.

The modern business world is handled largely through digital means, which means that virtually all of your important assets and information are likely digital. It’s convenient, especially for collaboration and communication, but it comes at the constant risk of data breaches, loss of confidential information (and trust), disruption of business processes, and theft of insider information.

Thus, one of the most important things you can do as a business in today’s digital world is to invest heavily in your cybersecurity. Setting up a validated ISMS will help ensure that you meet and follow industry best practices to protect your customer data, business intelligence, financial records, and more.

It enables you to meet legal and contractual requirements.

Since so much of today’s world is digital, businesses, government agencies, and even customers often expect – if not demand – specific steps to be taken to protect the information they give you. This holds true whether it’s a customer’s email address, CUI handed down from a government agency, or confidential business information from a supplier or partner.

Often, these are not suggestions; they’re worked into the contracts you sign when you establish deals with partners, suppliers, government agencies, and more. Some of them are also handed down from on high; regulations and laws from the government, whether it’s the US government, a state government where you operate, the European governmental coalition of the EU, or another governing agency.

Depending on where you operate, you may be beholden to:

• Securities and Exchange Commission disclosure rules.
• California’s Privacy Rights Act.
• The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard.
• The New York State Department of Financial Services Cybersecurity Regulation.
• The European Union General Data Protection Regulation.
• Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act.
• The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

This is just a selection of the kinds of regulations that may govern your operations, from industrial, state, national, and international regulations and laws.

It helps ensure business continuity.

An ISMS is about more than just the security and defense of your information; it’s about the ability to resist and recover from attacks or breaches when they happen. No one can be entirely perfect, and even best practices can be undermined by attackers seeking ways around the current industry standards. Establishing an ISMS helps ensure that the number of possible incidents drops dramatically and that recovery is fast and effective.

It helps open additional doors for business growth.

Another significant benefit of an ISMS – and compliance with ISO 27001 in general – is that it opens up new opportunities and avenues for growth for your business.

There are an immense number of entities, from sophisticated customers to potential business partners to government entities, who are seeking new business partnerships, contractors, or service providers. Your business is one such service provider. The problem is, if you aren’t compliant with ISO 27001 and have an ISMS set up, you aren’t even on the list of eligible service providers.

By gaining compliance, you can demonstrate that you take industry rules and data protection seriously and can gain access to these potential partners, customers, and contracts. It’s an entirely new class of growth that is closed to you without compliance in force.

It can help save you time and money.

There are two associated cost savings, in terms of both time and money, that can come from a valid ISMS. The first is in the event of a breach, the recovery is faster, avoiding disruptions that become costly.

The other is in terms of intake. Whenever you add new information, a new product, a new partnership, or any other change to your business, an ISMS in place allows you to slot that new information directly into your existing framework. Without a framework like an ISMS, you’re left having to perform individual analysis and security on each new addition to your business, which can be very costly in time and money.

What Are the Best Practices for Establishing an ISMS?

Setting up an ISMS generally involves going through the whole detailed ISO 27001 process; however, there are many general best practices you can identify and implement to get you off on the right foot when you begin.

Identify your business needs. Not every business needs top-end ISMS systems and security. If your business does not need or want government contracts, for example, you might not benefit from going the whole nine yards. On the other hand, if you routinely handle sensitive data above and beyond basic PII, you’ll likely need something, whether it’s ISO 27001, FedRAMP, CMMC, or another framework.

Develop an information security policy. The core of an ISMS is having a general information security policy in place. Certainly, if you start from scratch, you know what work needs to be done – everything – but if you have some level of security in place, you have less to do when you need to bump things up to ISMS levels.

Establish access control, logging, and auditing. A key part of securing any information is making sure to practice the principle of least permission; as few people as possible have access to any given piece of information as required to do their job. For sensitive information, restricting who can access it, logging when and how they access and change the information, and auditing these logs to validate activity is a critical part of the overall system.

Secure data and devices. Physical security and data security go hand in hand. It doesn’t matter if an account is secure if anyone can walk into an office and sit down at a computer to access data, right? Furthermore, data in transit and data at rest should be encrypted with industry-standard encryption so that even if data is compromised, it can’t be accessed.

Conduct training. Traditionally, the greatest vulnerability in digital security is not a weakness in systems; it’s a weakness in people. Thus, proactive, ongoing security training for awareness of general policies and adherence to specific procedures is required to establish an effective ISMS.

Is an ISMS Right for Your Business?

Knowing whether or not establishing an ISMS is right for you can be surprisingly tricky.

A lot depends on what your business goals are and who you intend to work with in the future. If your business works in the consumer space and has no desire to work with greater clients or partners, an ISMS might not be necessary. That’s not to say security is not important – it is – but the official ISMS framework might not be required.

At the same time, if you want to work with higher-up businesses, governments, and customers, an ISMS is all but required. It may be specified simply to set foot in the marketplace, and it will definitely be required by contract or law with the partnerships you forge.

That said, there are alternatives as well. For example, the aforementioned FedRAMP system applies solely to the United States Federal Government, and while it covers virtually all of the same bases, the two are not cross-compatible. Your business can even achieve both FedRAMP and ISO 27001 security if you wish to have the broadest possible horizons.

Whatever your goals are, you need a tool to help you organize, track, and implement the security required for an ISMS. That’s where we can help. At Ignyte, our Platform is a collaborative tool made specifically to achieve these kinds of security compliance goals. Book a demo today to see what it can do for you!

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Ignyte authored by Max Aulakh. Read the original post at: https://www.ignyteplatform.com/blog/security/information-security-management-system/