ISO 22301 and ISO 27001 are often confused or treated as interchangeable. They aren't. One keeps your business running; the other keeps your information secure. Both follow the same management-system structure, overlap meaningfully, and most mature organisations end up needing both.
At a glance
| ISO 22301 | ISO 27001 | |
|---|---|---|
| Discipline | Business Continuity Management (BCMS) | Information Security Management (ISMS) |
| Core question | "How do we keep operating through disruption?" | "How do we protect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information?" |
| Heart of it | BIA → RTO/RPO → continuity strategies → plans → exercises | Risk assessment → Annex A controls (93 in the 2022 version) → SoA |
| Annex A controls | No control catalogue | 93 controls across 4 themes |
| Certifiable | Yes | Yes |
| Structure | Harmonised HLS (clauses 4-10) | Harmonised HLS (clauses 4-10) |
What each one actually does
ISO 22301 (Business Continuity). Starts from a Business Impact Analysis: which processes are critical, how long they can be down (RTO), how much data loss is tolerable (RPO). From there you define continuity strategies, write BCP/DRP/IRP plans, and prove them through exercises (clause 8.5). The goal is operational survival.
ISO 27001 (Information Security). Starts from a risk assessment of threats to your information. You select and justify controls from Annex A (93 controls in 2022: organizational, people, physical, technological), document a Statement of Applicability, and run the ISMS. The goal is protecting information.
Where they overlap
They share the same management-system backbone (clauses 4-10: context, leadership, planning, support, operation, evaluation, improvement) so the ISMS/BCMS machinery is reusable: scope, policy, internal audit, management review, corrective action.
They also meet at the edges:
- Availability is a security property (ISO 27001) and the point of continuity (ISO 22301).
- ISO 27001 Annex A includes continuity controls (A.5.29-A.5.30) — but ISO 22301 is where you build them properly.
- An incident can be both a security event and a continuity trigger.
Which do you need?
- Only ISO 27001 if your driver is purely information security (e.g. a SaaS proving security to customers) — but you'll still need basic continuity.
- Only ISO 22301 if your driver is operational resilience and you're not chasing a security cert — rare in practice.
- Both for most regulated or mature organisations. DORA and NIS2 effectively require both disciplines: security risk management and business continuity.
Run them as one programme
Because they share the HLS, don't build two silos. Use one management system with:
- a shared scope, policy structure, audit and review cycle,
- one risk register feeding both security treatment (27001) and continuity strategy (22301),
- cross-framework control mapping so a single control/evidence answers to 22301, 27001, DORA and NIS2 at once.
How ResiPlan helps
ResiPlan runs both as a single BCMS/ISMS: a BIA-driven continuity programme (22301), risk assessment with 36 methodologies and a Statement of Applicability (27001), AI-generated policies and plans, exercises, internal audit, and cross-framework dashboards mapping one control to ISO 22301, ISO 27001, DORA and NIS2.
Try the ISO 22301 checklist and the ISO 27001 checklist, then book a demo.
ISO 27001 keeps your information safe. ISO 22301 keeps your business alive when something goes wrong anyway. You almost certainly need both — built once, as one programme.