Accelerating ISO 27001 Implementation and Certification for a Venture-Backed AI Company

Accelerating ISO 27001 Implementation and Certification for a Venture-Backed AI Company

Executive Summary

It goes without saying that data security is a top priority for any organisation processing confidential or personal information. The ramifications of getting this wrong can be severe and public for organisations, and we've all seen the news stories of when this goes wrong, along with some of the hefty fines imposed. Many companies use standards such as ISO 27001 to protect themselves and their customers. The International Standard for Information Security Management Systems (ISMS) provides a structured framework for achieving this.

When starting, some companies are unclear about where to begin with this process or overcomplicate it, making the ISMS seem complex, time-consuming, and resource-intensive. This can be due to a lack of understanding, the inability to identify the controls, or inadequate application. One size does not fit all! A recent client of mine was told they would need over six months and three hundred SOPs to become compliant, despite only having seven employees! This was significantly inflated, and we achieved this with around thirty SOPs in half the time they had. Has this needed to grow since? Of course! It's all about finding the right fit at the right time, utilising the best tools available within your budget.

So, where are we going with this? In my most recent ISO 27001 implementation, the client was using a new GRC tool called Complyance to track and automate their controls. Complyance's ethos is to support clients in reaching more proactive compliance and doing more than just checking the box - hence Complyance - compliance with a (wh)y. This whitepaper explores how organisations can streamline their implementation, audit, and maintenance while using this platform. It also highlights the key challenges of ISMS adoption, including risk assessments, policy documentation, and audit readiness.

It demonstrates how tools like Complyance enable a more efficient, structured, and scalable approach, making my job as a consultant easier, making the companies' implementation and ongoing compliance less stressful and resource-heavy, and making the auditors' review seamless. In combination with Complyance, we achieved 100% compliance for this client within 3 weeks, utilising an approach tailored to their needs and leveraging automation and AI built into the Complyance platform. This case study highlights how Complyance and expert guidance from TQC can help fast-growing technology companies achieve ISO 27001 certification efficiently and effectively, without disrupting their core business operations.

In short, this whitepaper aims to help organisations strengthen their security framework while ensuring compliance with ISO 27001. It serves as a roadmap to a smoother, more efficient certification journey.

Introduction to ISO 27001 & ISMS

If you're reading this, you likely have had a customer ask for your ISO 27001 certificate, or you're a growing company that needs to implement it, maybe even one that has it but is finding maintaining it challenging with the current resources you have. You're not alone; many companies first consider ISO 27001 when a customer directly requests it. Or they know that they need robust security in place, but don't know what that entails or how to demonstrate that adequately. This is where some consultants seem to over-inflate or make the process more complex than it needs to be.

At its heart, ISO 27001 is the process behind the documentation, controls, and audit process. So, let's start with the basics here. The standard provides organisations with a structured framework to protect sensitive data, manage security risks, and ensure regulatory compliance. It outlines the requirements for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving. It's necessary to remember what you're protecting, the risks associated with that, the size of the team, and oversight. Simply put, why do customers ask for it? ISO 27001 certification demonstrates a company's commitment to data security. It's an external examination of the controls across your people, processes, and tools to protect confidential and private information.

Unlike ad-hoc security measures, an ISMS provides a structured, repeatable, measurable approach to managing information security. It integrates risk management, policies, procedures, and continuous improvement into an organisation's daily operations. Doing it right, with good tools, can make an effective ISMS that genuinely benefits the company, rather than just a bolt-on that is primarily considered by a company a ticket to trade and not much more.

Challenges in Implementing an ISMS

 While the benefits of ISO 27001 are clear, organisations often face several challenges during implementation, including:

Complexity of Requirements: ISO 27001 requires organisations to conduct risk assessments, define security controls, and maintain extensive documentation. There is often not much scarier than a blank page staring back at you. When you need certification quickly, you don't need a committee debating whether something is a risk or a threat and how to document it.

Resource Constraints: Many businesses lack dedicated compliance teams, making it challenging to manage the process manually. Often, internal employees have other areas to focus on and might lack in­ depth knowledge of what is a must-have or a nice-to-have. Making the wrong call could be critical to the business. You want your operations team to grow your business, and that's where tools like Complyance, utilised by skilled consultants, can be a cost-effective option.

Maintaining Compliance: ISO 27001 certification is not a one-time achievement; organisations must continuously monitor, review, and improve their ISMS to remain compliant. New revisions and editions, changes in expectations, and other updates require ongoing monitoring. Having a system that can remind you when this is due is helpful; having someone who can make sure you do it the right way is also beneficial.

Preparing for Audits: Demonstrating compliance with external auditors requires well-documented evidence, which can be time-consuming without the right tools. Understanding their ask and mapping this to the standard can cause companies much trepidation. Complyance truly made this a painless experience for my last customer.

Overview as a Solution

So why does TQC recommend Complyance? Aside from the simple "because it works," it makes my life easier and saves countless hours editing and updating Excel sheets.

The Complyance management platform is designed to streamline and automate the complexities of regulatory adherence for mid-market and enterprise clients. By integrating purpose-built automation and responsible AI, Complyance offers a comprehensive suite of tools to enhance control management, automate audit preparation, and provide organisations with the visibility needed to reduce risk effectively.

Key Features

Controls Management: Centralise and monitor all standards-based and internal controls

Policy Centre: Create and edit policies, and send for approval and acknowledgement

Risk Management: Log, categorise, and assess risks across the organisation

Third-Party Management: Manage vendors for alignment with your GRC goals

Trust Centre: Auto-draft responses to incoming questionnaires and create a Trust portal

Why do clients choose Complyance?

 Complete Configurability: Complyance is explicitly built for maturing organisations and the complexity that comes with them, meaning configurability is embedded across the solution. They offer both off-the-shelf frameworks as well as the ability to build and migrate custom controls. The platform can be fully tailored to the organisation and its requirements, from custom fields to multi-org workspaces and custom AI.

Enterprise-Grade Integrations: I hear too often from clients that their software vendor promised them integrations for evidence generation, and then never delivered. Complyance offers pre-built, ready-to­ connect integrations to auto-generate evidence and continuously monitor control health. Their integrations require less than 30 minutes of effort from the client to set up and are designed with depth in mind to alleviate the burden of evidence collection truly.

Trust-Building Customer Support: The Complyance team approach our client relationships as partnerships and invests in dedicated resources to make sure clients really feel that.

Market-Leading, Responsible AI: Complyance leads the market in the use of AI features to automate and streamline an organisation's compliance processes, reducing manual effort, human error, and cost. The security and privacy of their AI is of utmost priority to ensure it is fit for clients.

Step-by-step Guide to Implementing an ISMS with Complyance

So, this document isn't just a sales pitch advising you to use TQC and Complyance, though I do highly recommend it. Let's examine the steps required to implement and successfully maintain ISO 27001.

Gap Analysis

Firstly, you'd be surprised by the times I've sat with senior execs who know they need ISO 27001 but haven't even brought a copy of the standard. That's stage one. Get yourself a copy and become familiar with the expectations. Once you know what you should be doing, you can look at what you are doing and start documenting the gaps.

Defining Scope & Objectives

While reading the standard and speaking to customers, think about establishing the scope of the ISMS. What parts of the company does it cover? What should it cover? Is it the whole company, or are there parts outside the scope? This can help facilitate the objectives, and that's not just to be ISO certified, although you will likely want that to show your customers.

Then, think about your objectives. Why are you doing it? To reduce the number of information security incidents? Can we improve the time we spend responding to them? To minimise the cost associated with them? Ensure the ISMS objectives align with the company's goals, and you'll have a much easier time working with them and getting buy-in.

Risk Assessment & Treatment

You'll likely already be doing this, but it's essential to document it effectively. Is it built across the company, from corporate changes, resources, and legal, to the project level or software development? How do these link together? How are they communicated internally, externally, and to senior management?

Policies & Controls Implementation

My guidance here is to keep it simple. The whole point of an SOP is to make a process repeatable. If you create 300 documents, all 10 pages each, I can assure you that they're not being repeated, as people will forget the content or not read them. Detail what you do, why you do it, and who should do it. Often, you may need to tweak things to align with the standard, but you don't have to discard everything you're doing and reinvent the wheel.

Documentation & Evidence Collection

I said this section wouldn't be a sales pitch for Complyance, but their tool made this so simple. Evidence is stored and managed within the platform, linked directly to all related controls, allowing you to easily cross-map one evidence item to any control in any framework. Complyance also have a suite of integrations that help to auto-generate evidence from your other source of truth platforms, and these run continuously, so you never have to collect them again manually!

In prep for your audit, think about how you would show evidence to the auditor. Where are things documented? Do you have tools to capture the decisions made and records created? Can you quickly and easily locate that new starter or longest-serving employee training record?

Internal Audit & Continuous Improvement

When creating your audit plan and selecting your internal (or consultant) auditors, consider the company's risks, whether specific teams are new and untested, whether they are growing rapidly, and whether they handle larger volumes or more complex data. Then, the processes will be matched with individuals who possess the right skills to assess each area.

This should be a way to find your gaps and drive improvement. I don't spend much effort where someone has forgotten to dot an I or cross a T, providing the process is followed. A little tip I was given early in my career was to focus on where one process hands over to another, which is often where the ball gets dropped. Remember why you're doing these audits to ensure the data is safe, secure, and integral.

Certification Readiness & External Audit

Something that is always a little unclear to companies going through the process for the first time is just how long it can take. If you need to demonstrate compliance and have something to show investors or customers within four months, don't wait until you've implemented the ISMS to contact the auditors, expecting them to be available the week after. Many of them have a backlog and could take up to a year to have space to audit. You'll also need to go through two rounds of audit, stage 1 and, often a few months later, stage 2, before being certified.

Benefits of Using Complyance for ISO 27001 Implementation

 So why, as the founder of TQC, am I spending my time writing a white paper that will hopefully help drive sales for Complyance? It's not out of the vast and endless kindness of my heart. It's because the platform actually makes my job easier.

I have worked with numerous start-ups, scale-ups, and SMEs in the life sciences and technology sectors, helping them navigate the complexities of various standards, including ISO 9001, 27001, and GxP. One of the most significant challenges in implementing an ISMS is mapping the standard's requirements to an organisation's existing security controls, identifying gaps, and demonstrating compliance. All while maintaining efficiency and minimising disruption to business operations.

Using Complyance has transformed the way I approach ISO 27001 implementations for my clients. It has streamlined efforts and ensured a structured, transparent, and accelerated certification process. One of the first steps in any ISO 27001 implementation is understanding what controls are already in place and how

They align with the standard's requirements. Traditionally, this process has been manual and time-intensive, requiring spreadsheets, extensive documentation reviews, and numerous stakeholder interviews.

With Complyance, I could map ISO 27001 controls to the company's existing security measures, identifying overlaps and reducing redundant efforts. I could use their off-the-shelf Complyance frameworks to assess the company's alignment with the standard quickly. It also helped me demonstrate what I spent my time on to my customers. They could see in real time a graph within the tool where they started at 0% compliance and how this was growing towards 100% as the audit date loomed.

Likewise, at the other end of the process, proving that security controls are implemented and compelling is a significant hurdle in achieving ISO 27001 certification. Proper documentation, policies, and records for an audit can be tedious and error-prone. Complyance made this process seamless by automatically pulling evidence from integrations with security tools and cloud environments, and allowing auditors easy access to relevant controls and evidence, dramatically reducing audit preparation time. This functionality was critical during the Stage 1 ISO 27001 audit for one of my clients, a venture-backed AI company.

Real-World Example: Accelerating ISO 27001 Certification for a Venture­ Backed Al Company

 As the Founder of TQC, a consultancy specialising in helping start-ups, scale-ups, and small to medium­ sized businesses in the life sciences and technology sectors, I worked with a venture-backed AI company to rapidly implement ISO 27001.

The Challenge: ISO 27001 Implementation from the Ground Up

• The Al company had ambitious growth plans and needed to achieve ISO 27001 certification quickly to meet customer requirements and strengthen its security posture. However, they faced several challenges:

• They had no existing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for information security.

• They needed to design and implement security controls aligned with ISO 27001 from scratch.

• The leadership team required a straightforward, structured approach to Complyance without disrupting daily operations with a small budget.

• They had to successfully pass Stage 1 of the ISO 27001 audit within three months-an aggressive timeline for a company without prior ISMS experience.

The Approach: Leveraging Complyance for a Streamlined Implementation

To achieve certification efficiently, we leveraged Complyance. Our approach included:

• Developing the ISMS Framework - Created the first set of SOPs, policies, and security controls aligned with ISO 27001 requirements.

• Centralised Compliance Documentation - Complyance provided a single source of truth for all policies, procedures, and evidence, making it easy to track progress.

• Audit Readiness & Stakeholder Engagement - The platform enabled real-time Compliance tracking, ensuring controls were implemented correctly and auditable.

• Facilitating the Stage 1 Audit - Complyance provided an efficient, transparent way to demonstrate Complyance, making it easy for the auditor to access required documentation and verify the implementation of controls.

The Outcome: The ISO 27001 Audit Passed with no findings and no opportunities for improvement. I have a happy customer, repeat work with the client, and a company willing to be a referral for TQC. We did it within budget and within time.

In just three months from initial engagement, the Al company:

• Successfully built a structured ISMS from scratch.

• Designed and implemented security policies and controls

• Passed their ISO 27001 Stage 1 audit with zero findings

• Gained a straightforward and scalable framework to support future growth

As the client prepares for stage 2, Complyance will help provide a straightforward way for its team to understand, track, and maintain security best practices moving forward. This case study highlights how Complyance and expert guidance from TQC can help fast-growing technology companies achieve ISO 27001 certification efficiently and effectively, without disrupting their core business operations.

Conclusion & Next Steps

 Achieving ISO 27001 certification is a critical milestone for any organisation looking to enhance its security posture, meet regulatory requirements, and build stakeholder trust. However, the journey can be complex, requiring a structured approach to risk management, documentation, and ongoing security improvements.

As demonstrated in our real-world example, leveraging Complyance streamlines the implementation process, reducing administrative overhead, improving visibility into security controls, and facilitating a smoother audit experience by combining automated Complyance tools with expert guidance from TQC, organisations-whether start-ups, scale-ups, or SMEs-can accelerate their ISO 27001 certification journey while ensuring long-term security resilience.

Ready to streamline your ISO 27001 journey?

Contact TQC today to discuss how we can support your certification process.

Request a demo of Comlyance to see how automation can simplify compliance for your organisation.

By taking a proactive and structured approach, your organisation can efficiently achieve ISO 27001 certification, strengthen security practices, and build trust with customers and partners while focusing on what it does best.