Cybercriminals thrive on weak security. The ISO 27001 framework, which describes how to build, run, and continually improve an information security management system (ISMS), is designed to ensure your organization isn’t one of their easy targets.

Hackers, scammers, financial criminals, and other denizens of the dark web would all prefer your company not to be ISO 27001 certified. But it’s one of the certifications customers most often ask vendors for, particularly in Europe and other international markets.

To understand why, we’ll define what ISO/IEC 27001 certification is exactly and how it protects your organization from these threats.

Watch the video below for an overview of what ISO 27001 certification is, plus the benefits and requirements of compliance, or keep reading.

What is ISO 27001?

ISO 27001 is a globally recognized information security standard published jointly by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). It requires organizations to establish, maintain, and continually improve an information security management system (ISMS) that protects the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information.

An ISMS is more than the hardware and software you use to keep information safe. It's the full set of people, processes, and technology that govern how your organization handles information:

• how you store and retrieve it
• how you assess and treat risk
• how you manage employee access and vendor risk
• how you improve over time

Its current full title reflects this breadth and depth: ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Information security, cybersecurity and privacy protection – Information security management systems – Requirements. Given its holistic approach to information security, ISO 27001 is one of the most respected standards internationally and stands apart from check-the-box compliance frameworks. Meeting this standard requires you to manage security as an ongoing business process rather than a one-time project.

Many organizations go one step further than simply complying with these requirements, and decide to complete an independent audit to achieve ISO 27001 certification.

What does it mean to be ISO 27001 certified?

Being ISO 27001 certified means an accredited certification body has audited your ISMS and confirmed it meets every requirement in ISO/IEC 27001:2022.

ISO 27001 certification is not mandatory. An organization can build, manage, and maintain an ISMS according to the standard, and choose not to complete an audit. But many do pursue ISO 27001 certification for third-party validation that their ISMS is well-designed, well-managed, and capable of protecting sensitive information.

This certification offers a lot of practical benefits, especially for growing businesses:

• It demonstrates to customers that you take data security seriously.
• It may gain you access to new clients and partners, especially upmarket or in international or heavily regulated markets, who otherwise wouldn't work with you.
• It can help set the foundation for your compliance program, making it easier to comply with cybersecurity frameworks that require similar controls, policies, and evidence.

Considering these benefits, it’s easy to understand the rapid adoption of certification.

There were nearly 100,000 valid ISO/IEC 27001 certificates worldwide in the ISO Survey 2024, published in September 2025 and still the latest edition available a year later. This is roughly a 2.7x increase in five years, compared to the 36,362 certificates in the 2019 survey.

But winning deals, passing vendor reviews, and other benefits only explain why an individual company gets certified. They don't explain why so many customers and regulators started expecting ISO 27001 certification in the first place, turning it from a nice-to-have into a business requirement.

To understand why they did, and what’s really driving the nearly 3x increase in certifications, you have to look at the purpose of the standard, or the problem it was created to solve.

What is the purpose of ISO 27001?

The core purpose of ISO/IEC 27001 is to provide organizations with a framework that clearly dictates what they need to do to protect their most valuable asset: their customer information.

As cyber attacks grow more frequent and sophisticated, this is imperative for all organizations. Those that adopt ISO/IEC 27001 will have a structured and repeatable framework in place for managing uncertainty and keeping information and information systems undamaged, confidential, and available.

This framework requires organizations to evaluate and improve security not just at the technical level, but across people, processes, and systems. This includes:

• vetting vendor risk,
• managing employee access,
• documenting internal policies,
• and embedding security throughout the organization’s culture and workflows.

As a result, ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t just reduce risk. It enhances operational excellence and cyber resilience so that organizations become more risk-aware and proactive in identifying, assessing, and mitigating threats to their information, especially as these threats multiply, evolve, and become more expensive.

According to IBM's Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026, the global average cost of a data breach reached a record $4.99 million, a 12% increase over last year and a record high. However, if looking at AI-enabled breaches, the stats are even worse. One in four malicious breaches are AI-enabled, a 56% increase over last year, and cost an average of $6 million, roughly $1 million more than the global breach average.

In addition to trying to counter increasingly sophisticated attacks on information systems, ISO created the standard to establish a common international benchmark for information security management. This was in part due to the rise of information security regulations around the world. Laws like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) in the United States and the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in the European Union impose penalties for non-compliance, which is often discovered through preventable breaches.

For example, in 2018, Anthem agreed to pay a record $16 million settlement following the largest health data breach in history, which remains the largest HIPAA fine to date. In 2020, the UK Information Commissioner's Office fined British Airways £20 million under GDPR for insufficient technical and organizational measures that led to a data breach affecting more than 400,000 customers.

ISO 27001 doesn't guarantee you'll avoid a breach or a fine. What it does is make security risk management systematic and regularly reviewed, which is the kind of "appropriate technical and organisational measures" regulators like the ICO and OCR and enterprise customers look for.

Who needs ISO 27001 certification?

No organization is legally required to get ISO 27001 certified, but any organization that handles sensitive customer, employee, or proprietary data should consider it. It's typically most valuable for companies whose customers or partners require proof of security, especially companies that sell internationally or to large enterprises.

The standard is designed to apply to organizations of any size, industry, or location, and to scale as your needs change. Organizations commonly pursue certification when they are:

• SaaS, cloud, and IT service providers that host or process customer data
• Selling into Europe, the UK, or Asia-Pacific, where ISO 27001 is often the credential buyers expect
• Moving upmarket into enterprise deals with formal vendor security reviews
• Operating in finance, healthcare, legal services, or other regulated industries and looking for one framework to support several obligations
• Receiving contracts, RFPs, or security questionnaires that ask for it by name

If most of your customers are US companies asking for SOC 2, ISO 27001 may not be your first priority. Many growing companies eventually hold both, especially given the substantial overlap between the two frameworks. For example, a landmark Secureframe report found more than 90% overlap between SOC 2 and ISO 27001 controls.

To help you understand when to prioritize ISO 27001 or why a customer may specify ISO 27001 over another framework, it’s important to understand how it differs from other cybersecurity standards.

How does ISO 27001 compare to other standards?

ISO 27001 is the certifiable standard at the center of the ISO/IEC 27000 family. Most related standards either explain it (ISO 27000), give implementation guidance for it (ISO 27002, ISO 27017), or apply the same management-system approach to another domain (ISO 27701 for privacy, ISO 9001 for quality).

Outside the ISO family, it's most often compared to other information security standards like SOC 2 and other certification frameworks like CMMC.

The comparison table below can not only help explain why a customer might ask for ISO 27001 over the alternatives. It can also clarify what ISO 27001 is by showing what it isn't.

This post was originally published in November 2022 and has last been updated on September 23, 2026 for accuracy and comprehensiveness.