ISO 27001 to ISO 42001

You already run the
management system.

ISO/IEC 42001 shares its backbone with ISO 27001. If you are certified for security, the step up to an AI management system is smaller than it looks. Here is the delta, and where Northbeams fills it.

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Browser · Desktop · CLI · MCP · Network

The good news

Same skeleton. New muscle for AI.

ISO management system standards share a common structure: context, leadership, planning, support, operation, performance evaluation, and improvement. Your ISO 27001 program already lives in that shape. ISO 42001 reuses it and adds the parts specific to governing AI.

What carries over, what is new

Reuse most of it. Build the AI-specific parts.

Carries over from 27001

Your management system skeleton: scope, leadership, risk methodology, internal audit, management review, corrective action, and continual improvement. The muscle memory is already there.

New for 42001

AI-specific policy, an AI system inventory, AI risk and impact assessment, human oversight, transparency, and lifecycle controls for the AI you build or deploy.

The delta at a glance

Most of the effort in a fresh ISO 42001 program is not the paperwork skeleton. It is collecting evidence about AI that your ISO 27001 controls were never scoped to see. Here is the shape of it.

Area	ISO 27001 today	ISO 42001 adds	Where Northbeams helps
Asset inventory	Information assets and systems	An inventory of AI systems in use	Live map of every AI tool across browser, desktop, CLI, and MCP
Risk assessment	Information security risk	AI-specific risk and impact	On-device classification with severity and estimated exposure value
Operational controls	Access, crypto, logging	AI use, oversight, and enforcement	One-click block, allow, and sandbox, plus Model Governance
Records	Security event logs	Records of AI activity over time	One immutable, signed log with per-user attribution

The management system you already certified does the rest. Northbeams supplies the AI evidence layer, exported in one click and mapped to the controls your auditor tests.

The evidence layer

The AI records your 27001 stack never collected.

Your existing tooling logs infrastructure, not coding agents in the terminal or data pasted into a chatbot. Northbeams closes that gap and feeds the GRC platform you already run.

•Works alongside Vanta, Drata, OneTrust, and Scytale
•Immutable signed logs, unlimited history, 7-year retention on Enterprise
•One-click export mapped to the controls your auditor tests
•No proxy, no MITM cert, no network change to start

A general orientation, not legal or certification advice. ISO 42001 is certified by an accredited body after an audit. Northbeams is not the audit and does not certify you. The evidence pack is part of your evidence library, and because we are a tool rather than an AI provider, your scope depends on how your organization uses AI. See ISO 42001, evidenced, or the full compliance hub.

Extend the system you already run.

Add the AI evidence layer. One export. See it free.