An Introduction to ISO 27001 Legal Registers
Overview
ISO 27001 is the world’s most recognised information security standard. To gain certification, organisations must make some key commitments, including a commitment to meeting their legal and compliance obligations.
Your organisation will need to implement processes that ensure you can:
- Identify legal and other requirements that apply to your organisation.
- Keep up to date with changes to legislation.
Understanding legislation and its requirements is invaluable to any organisation. It helps you to identify critical tasks, decreasing the chance of non-conformances and reducing risk of information security breaches.
This article will cover what an ISO 27001 legal register is, how to create one and how to get value from it.
What is an Information Security ISO 27001 Legal Register?
An information security legal register enables you to consolidate all requited legal legislation into a convenient format that is useful to you and your team. This can be done simply in a word or excel document, but it’s much easier and more effective to use a legal register tool that can add information for you.
The register consists of a list of legislation and other compliance requirements that affect the business directly, or just may be of interest to the business.
Planning Your ISO 27001 Legal Register
Like other ISO management standards, ISO 27001 works on the premise of “Plan-Do-Check-Act”. In the planning process, you will need to identify the context of the business and it’s interested parties. In understanding your company’s processes, products and services, along with who you are working with, you will gain useful insights into what should be included in your information security register.
You will need to demonstrate that whoever complies and assesses your ISO 27001 legal register is competent in doing so, therefore will require someone qualified or trained in information security. If this is not available within your organisation, get in touch with us for help from our team.
When planning the details of your legal register, consider the following. Your legal register should contain information on:
- Legislation that affects your business directly.
- Contractual obligations from customer and vendor contracts that impose specific information security obligations.
- Industry standards and guidance around information security.
- Sector or trade body requirements that apply to your business.
Creating an Information Security ISO 27001 Legal Register
An effective ISO 27001 will help you to:
- Consolidate all legislation, including amendments, in one location.
- Gather other requirements, such as contractual elements.
- Clarify roles and responsibilities to ensure accountability and efficiency.
- Identify and implement necessary controls for continually improving your environmental management system.
- Facilitate the management of routine assessments, such as internal audits, by providing a structured framework and reference point.
ISO 27001 emphasises the importance of ‘continual improvement’. As your business grows and changes, you need to regularly review and update your ISO 27001 legal register to reflect changes in regulation, business operations, and compliance requirements. Don’t forget that all these changes need to be communicated to your team, so they fully understand them.
When implemented correctly, ISO 27001 mitigates risks and threats, leading to improved data protection, enhanced customer and partner trust, and potential financial benefits by avoiding penalties and incident costs.
