ISO 27001 certification took us six months, one failed internal audit, and real investment in documentation tooling. Here is the honest walkthrough.
The timeline
Months one and two went to gap analysis and scoping. Months three and four were policy writing and control implementation. Month five was internal audit — which we failed the first time — and month six was remediation and the external audit.
Where the effort really goes
The technical controls were the easy part. The heavy lifting was documentation, access reviews, and getting every team to follow the same process consistently.
What we wish we had known
- Start collecting evidence from day one, not before the audit.
- Assign a single owner — shared responsibility means no responsibility.
- Budget for tooling; spreadsheets do not scale to an audit.
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