How to Get ISO 27001 Certified: A Step-by-Step Guide

What is ISO 27001?

ISO 27001 is the international standard for information security management systems (ISMS). It provides a systematic framework for managing sensitive company and customer data, ensuring its confidentiality, integrity, and availability. Achieving certification demonstrates to clients, partners, and regulators that your organization takes data security seriously.

Unlike some compliance frameworks that focus on specific technical controls, ISO 27001 is a management system standard. It requires you to build a living process for identifying risks, implementing controls, and continuously improving your security posture.

Who needs ISO 27001?

ISO 27001 certification is increasingly expected across industries, but it’s especially relevant if:

• You sell to enterprises — large buyers frequently require ISO 27001 as a procurement condition.
• You handle sensitive data — financial data, health records, PII, or intellectual property.
• You operate in regulated industries — fintech, healthtech, legal tech, and defence supply chains.
• You’re expanding into Europe — ISO 27001 is widely recognized across the EU and often pairs with GDPR compliance.
• You’re preparing for investment or acquisition — investors and acquirers expect structured security practices, especially during technical due diligence.

Step-by-step certification process

Step 1: Define your scope

Decide which parts of your organization, processes, and systems fall within the ISMS boundary. A SaaS company might scope its cloud infrastructure, development processes, and customer data handling. Start narrow — you can always expand later.

Step 2: Perform a risk assessment

Identify information security risks across your scoped environment. For each risk, evaluate the likelihood and impact, then decide how to treat it: mitigate, accept, transfer, or avoid. This risk assessment drives every control decision you make.

Use a structured approach. AuditFront’s ISO 27001 risk assessment template can help you get started with a consistent methodology.

Step 3: Write your Statement of Applicability (SoA)

The SoA maps all 93 controls from ISO 27001 Annex A to your organization. For each control, document whether it applies, why (or why not), and how you’ve implemented it. This is the single most important document auditors review.

Step 4: Implement controls

Based on your risk assessment and SoA, implement the necessary security controls. These span organizational policies, people controls (hiring, training, termination), physical security, and technical controls (access management, encryption, logging, incident response).

Don’t try to do everything at once. Prioritize based on risk level — start with access control, encryption, and incident response.

Step 5: Build the ISMS documentation

ISO 27001 requires documented policies, procedures, and records. Key documents include:

• Information security policy
• Risk assessment methodology and results
• Statement of Applicability
• Risk treatment plan
• Access control policy
• Incident response procedure
• Business continuity plan
• Internal audit procedure

Step 6: Run an internal audit

Before your certification audit, conduct an internal audit to check your ISMS against the standard’s requirements. Identify gaps and non-conformities, then fix them. This is your dress rehearsal — take it seriously.

Step 7: Management review

Senior leadership must formally review the ISMS. This isn’t a rubber-stamp meeting. Management reviews cover audit results, risk assessment updates, security incidents, and resource allocation. Auditors will ask to see the minutes.

Step 8: Stage 1 audit (documentation review)

Your certification body reviews your ISMS documentation to verify it meets the standard’s requirements. They check your scope, SoA, risk assessment, and key policies. If there are major gaps, they’ll flag them before Stage 2.

Step 9: Stage 2 audit (implementation audit)

The main event. Auditors spend time on-site (or remotely) verifying that your controls are actually implemented and effective. They interview staff, review evidence, and test processes. This typically takes 3 to 5 days for a small-to-medium company.

Step 10: Certification and surveillance

If you pass Stage 2, you receive your ISO 27001 certificate. Certification lasts 3 years, with surveillance audits annually and a full recertification audit in year 3.

Timeline and cost

Company size	Typical timeline	Estimated cost
Startup (10-50 people)	3-6 months	$15,000-$40,000
Mid-market (50-250 people)	6-12 months	$40,000-$100,000
Enterprise (250+ people)	9-18 months	$100,000+

Costs include consultant fees, tooling, certification body fees, and staff time. The biggest hidden cost is the internal time required to build documentation, implement controls, and prepare evidence.

Common mistakes to avoid

1. Scoping too broadly — trying to certify your entire organization on the first attempt adds months of work. Start with a focused scope.
2. Treating it as a checkbox exercise — auditors can tell when controls exist only on paper. Your ISMS needs to be genuinely operational.
3. Neglecting the risk assessment — your risk assessment should drive control selection, not the other way around.
4. Underestimating documentation — ISO 27001 is documentation-heavy. Start writing policies early.
5. Skipping the internal audit — your internal audit is your chance to find and fix problems before the certification body does.
6. Ignoring staff awareness — auditors interview employees. If your team doesn’t know the security policy exists, that’s a non-conformity.

How AuditFront helps

AuditFront provides structured self-assessment templates for all 93 ISO 27001 Annex A controls. Run a gap analysis to see exactly where you stand, track remediation progress with dashboards, and generate board-ready reports — all without spreadsheet chaos.

Start your free ISO 27001 assessment and see where you stand in under an hour.