An international standard for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continually improving a Privacy Information Management System (PIMS) in accordance with ISO/IEC 27701:2025.

ISO/IEC 27701 provides a structured, auditable framework for managing privacy risk and demonstrating accountability for the handling of personally identifiable information (PII). It applies to organisations acting as PII controllers and/or PII processors and is suitable across sectors and organisation sizes.

The 2025 edition positions ISO/IEC 27701 as an independent management system standard that can be implemented on its own, while also aligning with ISO/IEC 27001 to streamline adoption where an ISMS already exists. In practice, this helps organizations formalize privacy governance and operational privacy controls, including responsibilities, privacy risk treatment, and continual improvement—supported by evidence, internal review, and measurable objectives.

If your organization is seeking to strengthen privacy assurance or pursue a recognized PIMS framework, Cyber Security Centre’s ISO/IEC 27701 overview and readiness support can help you interpret the standard, identify gaps, and prioritize the actions required to build and evidence effective privacy management.

• Inspires trust – provides customers, partners, and stakeholders with confidence that privacy is governed through a structured, independently verifiable management system.
• Stronger privacy capability – improves how your organization manages privacy risk and protects personally identifiable information across people, process, and technology.
• Supports regulatory alignment – helps demonstrate alignment with privacy obligations and expectations (ISO cites global regulations such as GDPR as an example).
• Reduces incident impact – strengthens preparedness and operational discipline, reducing the likelihood and impact of privacy breaches and associated reputational damage.
• Enables growth and assurance – provides a globally recognized privacy management framework that supports procurement requirements, due diligence, and preferred-supplier positioning.

ISO/IEC 27701 is designed for organization’s that determine the purposes and means of processing PII (controllers) and/or process PII on behalf of others (processors). Executives, privacy leads, risk owners, and operational teams can use a PIMS to define privacy governance, clarify roles and responsibilities, implement consistent privacy controls, and produce the evidence needed for assurance—internally and to customers, partners, and regulators.

As a cyber security research organization, Cyber Security Centre provides evidence-based insight across a broad range of cyber security and privacy topics. Our professional staff hold postgraduate qualifications (Master’s level and above), with several undertaking PhD research, enabling us to deliver practical guidance grounded in current research and industry practice.