ISO/IEC 27001, part of the growing ISO/IEC 27000 family of standards, is an information security management system (ISMS) standard, of which the last revision was published in October 2013 by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). Its full name is ISO/IEC 27001:2013 – Information technology – Security techniques – Information security management systems – Requirements.
ISO/IEC 27001 formally specifies a management system that is intended to bring information security under explicit management control.
ISO/IEC 27002 incorporates mainly part 1 of the BS 7799 good security management practice standard. The latest versions of BS 7799 is BS 7799-3. Sometimes ISO/IEC 27002 is therefore referred to as ISO 17799 or BS 7799 part 1 and sometimes it refers to part 1 and part 7. BS 7799 part 1 provides an outline or good practice guide for cybersecurity management; whereas BS 7799 part 2 and ISO/IEC 27001 are normative and therefore provide a framework for certification. ISO/IEC 27002 is a high level guide to cybersecurity. It is most beneficial as explanatory guidance for the management of an organisation to obtain certification to the ISO/IEC 27001 standard. The certification once obtained lasts three years. Depending on the auditing organisation, no or some intermediate audits may be carried out during the three years.
ISO/IEC 27001 (ISMS) replaces BS 7799 part 2, but since it is backward compatible any organization working toward BS 7799 part 2 can easily transition to the ISO/IEC 27001 certification process. There is also a transitional audit available to make it easier once an organization is BS 7799 part 2-certified for the organization to become ISO/IEC 27001-certified. ISO/IEC 27002 provides best practice recommendations on information security management for use by those responsible for initiating, implementing or maintaining information security management systems (ISMS). It states the information security systems required to implement ISO/IEC 27002 control objectives. Without ISO/IEC 27001, ISO/IEC 27002 control objectives are ineffective. ISO/IEC 27002 controls objectives are incorporated into ISO 27001 in Annex A.
ISO/IEC 21827 (SSE-CMM – ISO/IEC 21827) is an International Standard based on the Systems Security Engineering Capability Maturity Model (SSE-CMM) that can measure the maturity of ISO controls objectives.
