Things to Know About the ISO 27001 Data Retention Requirements and Policies

Do you own an online business and are looking for ways to improve the operational procedures? Well, getting your brand certified with the ISO 27001 standard may help you with that. ISO 27001 is the internationally recognized standard for ISMS (Information Security Management Systems). Having ISO 27001 in place shows that you take serious measures to protect your sensitive client data from breaches and cyberattacks. However, you must understand the latest ISO 27001 data retention requirements and policies beforehand.

Let’s discuss more about obtaining the ISO 27001 certification for your online brand in the below blog post.

Why is data retention essential for ISO 27001 compliance?

ISO 27001 is an international information security standard.

It provides your organization with guidelines to manage potential ISMS risks and protect sensitive data within an ISMS.

Implementing the ISO 27001 standard in your business procedures addresses numerous aspects of information security, including data retention for data integrity, confidentiality, and availability.

Data retention is a procedure to store and maintain data for a specific length of time. Companies pursuing ISO 27001 compliance must define proper data management processes. The procedure includes storing and disposing of data as well as retention periods.

Data retention is essential for the following 4 reasons:

1.Promote data hygiene

Data retention helps organizations in defining procedures to create, maintain, and delete data to prevent duplicating records or recording outdated data.

High-quality data further improves your business processes, which can lead to better insights and decision-making.

2.Support efficient business operational processes

The data retention policy ensures that the critical data of your company is appropriately retained and maintained.

It further supports a variety of essential business operations that allow your organization to:

• Generate accurate financial records

• Develop effective marketing initiatives

• Track the performance of your organization

• Highlight market and customer trends

• Support the development of products and services

3.Inform and improve incident response

The data retention process includes maintaining a proper system, user access logs, and network traffic.

Reliable clogging can help the security team with the following:

• Understand entry points and attack vectors

• Determine the scope of any compromised data

• Flag suspicious activities and anomalies

• Assess the severity of a potential data breach incident

• Implement appropriate controls to prevent future security breach incidents

4.Protect against accidental data loss

Data retention promotes recovery and backup procedures that can further reduce the risk of data loss due to natural disasters, hardware failure, or malicious activity.

Testing the backup system and procedures regularly as a strategy for data retention ensures that the organizational data can be restored during accidental loss, which can also minimize downtime and support business continuity.

What are the basic requirements for the ISO 27001 data retention process?

The Annex A 5.33 of ISO 27001 covers the requirements for the “Protection of Records.”

To comply with the ISO 27001 standard, organizations should take serious measures to protect all records against unauthorized data access or release, data falsification, and data loss.

Under the latest version of the ISO 27001 standard (2022), organizations are required to do the following:

1.Establish procedures and guidelines for:

• Record disposal

• Record storage

• Prevention of record manipulation

• Establishing a chain of custody for handling records

2.Maintain a schedule for retaining all records:

It further defines how long your organization will be keeping different types of records according to the specific business use.

3.Define the storing and handling procedures of records that address:

Regulatory and legal requirements for keeping commercial records

Customer and societal expectations for how your brand should manage personal data and organizational records

4.Use appropriate and secure methods to destroy records when the retention period ends

5.Categorize the records based on the security risks of your organization, especially:

• Legal records

• Financial transactions

• Personnel records

• Accounting records

6.Store crucial records in a method that allows them to be retrieved if requested by a third party (either internal or external)

7.In the matter of electronic data, consider and mitigate the potential risks of any technological changes that can further limit data access and recovery

8.Follow any instructions from manufacturers when maintaining the electronic records

How to find the right third-party ISO 27001 specialists for your organization?

The ISO 27001 standard has become a crucial requirement for businesses operating online across the world.

Getting your company certified with the ISO 27001 standard can offer lots of benefits, including a competitive advantage and more international contracts compared to companies without ISO 27001.

Hence, you may find a lot of third-party ISO 27001 auditing firms across the country.

However, all of them are not the same even though they offer similar services.

Well, considering the following factors can help you find the right third-party ISO 27001 auditing firm for your business:

1.Check the experience and reputation of the third-party ISO 27001 auditing firm

2.Ask about the estimated timeline and budget for the ISO 27001 certification process

3.Check the testimonials and referrals from their present and former clientele on ISO 27001 implementation

4.Ask what the team knows about the latest ISO 27001 standard

5.Check the ISO certifications and qualifications of the third-party ISO 27001 auditors

6.Ask about the understanding of the team on the latest ISO 27001 requirements

7.Check the customer portfolio of the third-party ISO 27001 auditing firm

Bottom line

Are you wondering what would be the best way to improve the data security of your organization? Well, implementing the ISO 27001 standard in your business process can help you with it. Having ISO 27001 in place ensures that your organization takes serious measures to protect business data from breaches and cyberattacks. All you’ll have to do is fulfill the latest ISO 27001 data retention requirements. We hope this blog post with the above-written points can help you understand it.