How to Conduct a Well-Planned ISO 27001 Internal Audit?

by Isabel Blamey Professional writer

Everybody knows that an internal audit is important for the ISO 27001 compliance; still, some organizations consider the audit process as a bewildering one. The audit becomes easier by having a well-planned audit strategy in place. If you are one of those entrepreneurs, who is looking for planning, leading, and executing an ISO 27001 Information Security Management System or ISMS, then you must go through five stages. We will discuss these five stages; before that, it is important to have a clear concept of ISO 27001 standard and internal audit. Well, don’t get tensed! It is just like an internal audit like ISO 17025 internal audit or ISO 9001 internal audit. To clear the confusion, let’s have a look at ISO 27001 standard.

ISO 27001 Standard

ISO 27001 is an international standard that is designed for developing and maintaining an efficient Information Security Management System and ISMS. This system is a framework for policies and processes including legal, technical, and physical controls associated with an organization’s information risk management processes.

Internal Audit: ISO 27001

We all know that internal audit is a method that inspects all the areas of an Information Security Management System to determine the performance of the system. Internal audit can be an exact replica of the final audit. In fact, this step prepares you for the final audit.

Now, let’s focus on the five vital stages of ISO 27001 internal audit.

1. Scoping and pre-audit survey

Auditors should conduct a risk-based assessment for determining the focus of the audit. Moreover, they need to concentrate on those areas, which are apparently out of scope. Information sources may include industry research, earlier reports of ISMS, and ISMS policy.

You must make sure that your audit scope is relevant in relation to the organization. This audit report should be aligned with the scope of your ISMS policy. Otherwise, you would find it difficult to get your ISMS certified. Before making the scope, don’t forget to perform a pre-audit survey to draft the proper outline of the framework. While performing this pre-audit survey, you need to ensure that you have correctly identified and communicated with the main shareholders in the ISMS for requesting any documentation that needs to be reviewed during the internal audit.

2. Planning and preparation

Once the scope has been prepared, your internal auditors should break it down into detail by producing an effective ISMS audit work-plan, in which the audit timing and the resourcing is aligned with the management requirements. Traditional project planning charts may help you a lot.

In most of the cases, audit plans check out and place boundaries around the remaining phases of the ISO audit process. This way is applicable to ISO 17025 internal audit as well. The timing of your audit plan should be determined in a way that can help you prioritize any aspects you believe to be useful for addressing the greatest threats to the organization.

In this context, it should be noted that the success of your internal audit would depend largely on your planning and preparation. Hence, you must pay special attention to planning and preparation.

3. Fieldwork

After preparing the ISMS audit work plan, your auditors should be looking for evidence by interviewing the staff, managers, and other shareholders engaged with the ISMS. The auditors should review the ISMS documents, printout, and data to observe the ISMS processes in action. Audit tests should intend to validate the evidence as it is gathered. The entire audit process must also be documented properly.

4. Analysis

The evidence you have gathered from the audit must be sorted properly. On some occasions, analysis plays important roles in analyzing and identifying the gaps within the evidence or indicates the requirements for more audit tests that will involve further field-testing. The analysis is important as based on the analysis; you need to initiate further action for your organization.

5. Reporting

What should your audit report include? The basic things that the audit report should include are:

• An introduction explaining the scope, objectives, timing, and extent of the work performed;

• The intended report should clearly define which areas need improvement, which areas need to maintain the guidelines and circulation

• Detailed findings

• Further recommendations

Follow these five steps to perform your internal audit successfully!