Easily Integrate ISO 9001 with ISO 27001 Information Security Management System

ISO 9001 illustrates a crystal-clear holistic approach about Quality Management System and emphasizes on the importance of ensuring to deliver nothing else than high quality products and services to the customers. In order to ensure security of the information system of any organization, ISO 27001 comes into action by giving a systematic approach to secure company’s data by filling the loopholes in current management system that may lead to data lost and hacking of may be even complete company’s system and gives guidelines about managing security risks.

Key Difference between ISO 9001 and ISO 27001

ISO 9001:2015 defines all the required specifications for a Quality Management System (QMS) to demonstrate the ability to flawless and high quality products and services to the customers.

ISO 27001: defines all the required specifications for an Information Security Management System (ISMS) that includes all legal requirements, physical and technical hard copy and soft copy access control leading to improved security of the organizational data.

Finding Similarities to start integration of ISO 9001 and ISO 27001

ISO 9001  and ISO 27001, both ISO standards have detailed guidelines and clauses covering different scope areas. The best practice to start integration of both the systems will be considering their common factors first. Following are the common grounds of ISO 9001 and ISO 27001:

  • Defining scope, policy and company’s objectives: Start with defining company’s profile, mission statement, goals and objectives.
  • Documentation system and its effectiveness: Everything occurring physically in your system must be documented having a revision number and review date. The documents made should be properly implemented to the physical system and should be made effective.
  • Management reviews: Management review meetings should be conducted timely (means monthly, quarterly and annually) and properly (which means having documented minutes of meeting with agenda and names of the participants being mentioned. The actions mutually decided in the management review meetings should be closed timely and closure report should be made and signed off by the stakeholders).
  • Internal audits being conducted in-house: Internal audits should be conducted timely by the auditors and auditees’ team should fully ensure to conduct internal audits on time. The role of the senior management here is to give support to auditors and auditees (where necessary).
  • Identifying corrective actions and getting corrective actions done within deadlines: After identifying gaps and corrective actions during internal audit exercise being conducted, both the ISO standards emphasize on getting the gaps closed within decided timelines and corrective actions should be in place.
  • Minimization of Non-conformance (Major and Minor): If any non-conformities being identified in internal audit (be it major or minor), the closure of those non-conformities must be ensured.
  • Continual Improvement via Project Initiatives: Continuous improvement cycle is part and parcel for both the ISO standards. The opportunities for improvements (if identified) must be catered in improvement based projects.

Make the Most of Your Time and Energy by Integrating ISO 9001 and ISO 27001

Integrating both the ISO standards will help you to get two in one benefits. The organizations that have designed Quality Management System (QMS) for themselves customized and are ISO 9001:215 certified also, they further need to extent their existing QMS to the requirements of ISO 27001 excluding the similarities between ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 already being described above.

Why Integrating ISO 9001 and ISO 27001?

By extending existing QMS to cater all the requirements of ISMS (Information Security Management System), one will be able to comply with the globally recognized standard which encompass all the required legal laws and regulations often being demanded by the big corporate customers. Thus customer’s satisfaction level can be made achievable by integrating both must-to-have ISO standards’ compliance.

In the very similar way, if the organization already has ISO 27001 certification and have existing ISMS then there will be much easier task to integrate both the ISO standards.

Another advantage of having both the ISO standards being integrated together is having the ability to deliver high quality results in the form of premium quality products and services by even more secure means which is an additional plus point for you to exhibit to your customers increasing the probability of winning more tenders than your marketplace competitors and enhanced company’s profile by having now much better marketable characteristic.

What are the Benefits for My Clients If I get ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 Integrated?

Management of every organization be it small, medium or big corporate business always tends to deliver flawless results but without harming anyone’s security. The ideal situation that customers may look for will be having cost efficient solution being flawlessly high quality with utmost security levels. Clients will prefer to place their orders to those organizations who have sound security system for their data and who possess full capabilities to deliver high quality near to perfection products and services.

However, the ultimate output of both the ISO standards compliance will be achieving customer’s satisfaction to maximum possible best level. Moreover, the customers who are looking for system security will get additional benefit of high quality products and services that can be charged to the customers separately and similarly the customers who will be searching for certified high quality products and services will get system security as bonus benefit for them.

Key Benefits of Integrating ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 for You:

  • Improvement in the overall certification process
  • Saving your time and energy by not going for two ISO standards implementation
  • Eliminating the probability of duplication
  • Grabbing more credibility and trust of your customers by being ISO 9001 and ISO 27001 certified
  • Getting the certification process more simplified

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