ISO 27001 Internal Audit Checklist

An ISO 27001 internal audit checklist is used by auditors to assess and ensure compliance of an organization’s information security management systems (ISMS). It can be downloaded either in Word or Google Docs format for easy reference and reuse.

Audit teams should not have any involvement with creating or overseeing ISMSs; additionally, their resources should not operate or monitor any controls being reviewed – this allows for impartiality during their assessment of controls being reviewed.

Documentation Review
Documentation is a critical element of ISO 27001 audits. Auditors will look for evidence of compliance as well as records detailing changes or actions taken since initial compliance has been attained.

Now is an opportune time to take stock and review existing policies, comparing them against Annex A of ISO 27001 standards in order to identify areas needing improvement and provide auditors with evidence in support of your audit results.

Once you have documented all processes and systems within your workplace, an internal audit should be conducted as part of ISO 27001 certification requirements. For maximum effect, consider performing these audits annually across different departments within your business so as to cover all areas. Doing this allows you to quickly address issues as they arise – saving both time and money during recertification audits.

Risk Assessment
An internal auditor evaluates your ISMS’s documentation, policies, procedures, controls and records against ISO 27001 requirements to ascertain whether they meet them. As this person must remain impartial throughout their assessment of your ISMS they are typically not involved with its creation, implementation or day-to-day operation.

Step two is conducting a field review, in which an internal auditor evaluates your ISMS by performing audit tests and validating evidence, such as testing your ability to detect threats and assess risks as well as conducting staff interviews to see how staff adhere to policies and procedures of your ISMS.

As part of their observations and analyses, internal auditors generate an internal audit report for management review. This document should contain details regarding its scope, objectives and extent, along with any major or minor non-conformities discovered and recommendations for improvement; additionally it should cover any potential impacts to business continuity that have been identified – this step can be especially crucial if your organization is preparing to undergo stage 2 ISO certification auditing.

Control Assessment
Internal ISO 27001 audits serve to prepare your organization for an external certification audit of ISO 27001 certification. Conducted either by those involved with creating and documenting your ISMS or by third-party consultants, an internal ISO 27001 audit should identify any nonconformities which will become obvious during official ISO certification audit.

An auditor will conduct a review of your documentation and compare it against the standards outlined in Annex A. To assist with this process, use an ISO 27001 audit checklist with columns for control-item numbers corresponding to clause numbering in the standard, descriptions of controls, compliance statuses and references associated with each control item.

Documenting audits using an online template makes it simple to keep on top of what needs to be documented and recognize trends that will bring your organization closer to ISO 27001 compliance and certification. By saving time on documentation of audits, an audit template allows you to focus more on developing your ISMS for business success than on its documentation.

Implementation
After performing the document review, an internal auditor must conduct their main audit – visiting departments and sites, speaking to employees, checking computer equipment and physical security as part of this effort. For such an exhaustive process to be successful, creating a checklist will prove indispensable as they must remember all requirements outlined in documentation (policies, procedures and plans) while verifying if these policies have actually been implemented according to ISO 27001 standard requirements.

An internal auditor must create an audit report using our simple template, outlining their scope, objectives, timeline and assessments along with key findings of their audit. Furthermore, they can track evidence collected – for instance names of interviewees interviewed or quoted from interviews conducted; IDs/content of records examined; descriptions of facilities visited or observations regarding equipment etc – helping identify any gaps within ISMS/BCMS systems that must be filled to achieve full ISO 27001 certification compliance and certification.