Information security is not just about firewalls and encryption. It is fundamentally about people. ISO 27001, the international standard for information security management systems, recognises this reality through its extensive people-focused controls. Yet many organisations struggle to demonstrate genuine compliance with these human-centred requirements. They rely on tick-box training records, gut instinct hiring decisions, and reactive disciplinary measures. This leaves critical gaps in their information security posture.
Solas OS changes this approach. By analysing everyday workplace signals, it surfaces the behavioural insights organisations need to meet ISO 27001's people requirements with confidence and rigour. Here are nine ways Solas OS supports ISO 27001 compliance across the standard's most critical human-focused controls.
1. Annex A.6.1: Intelligent Screening and Continuous Personnel Suitability Monitoring
The requirement: Organisations must screen personnel before employment and continuously monitor their suitability for roles with access to sensitive information. This goes beyond the initial background check; security teams need ongoing assurance that employees remain trustworthy and aligned with security responsibilities.
How Solas OS helps: Solas OS continuously monitors workplace behaviour patterns, identifying shifts in collaboration habits, communication frequency, and work patterns that might indicate changing suitability. The system flags unusual behaviours such as sudden isolation, excessive after-hours access, or unusual data access patterns. This allows security teams to move from snapshot-based vetting to continuous, data-driven monitoring.
Why this matters: Traditional approaches rely on periodic interviews or incident-triggered reviews. By then, problems may have already caused damage. Solas OS detects subtle behavioural changes in real time, enabling proactive conversations and interventions before risk materialises into actual security incidents.
2. Annex A.6.2: Making Security Responsibilities Real Through Employment Terms
The requirement: Employment contracts and conditions must clearly establish security responsibilities and expectations. The standard demands that organisations actively communicate what good security behaviour looks like and what penalties apply for violations.
How Solas OS helps: Solas OS provides evidence-based insights into which security practices are actually being followed and where gaps exist. By identifying clusters of employees with similar behaviour patterns, organisations can see where contractual responsibilities are clearly understood and where additional clarity is needed. The system creates a baseline of actual security behaviour against which employment expectations can be measured.
Why this matters: Most organisations insert security clauses into employment contracts and hope for the best. Solas OS reveals the gap between written expectations and actual behaviour, allowing organisations to refine their terms, target communications, and hold meaningful conversations about what security responsibility actually means in practice.
3. Annex A.6.3: Information Security Awareness, Education and Training
The requirement: All personnel must receive appropriate security awareness training and education. This must be documented, regular, and aligned with the organisation's security policy. Generic annual training modules rarely stick.
How Solas OS helps: Solas OS identifies high-risk behaviour clusters and knowledge gaps, allowing training programmes to be targeted precisely where they are most needed. Rather than generic, one-size-fits-all training, organisations can use Solas OS insights to develop role-specific and risk-specific training interventions. The system tracks behaviour changes post-training, providing evidence that learning is translating into improved security practices.
Why this matters: Compliance traditionally focuses on training attendance and test completion. Solas OS proves that training actually changes behaviour. When organisations see clusters of risky behaviour shift after a targeted training intervention, they have evidence of effective learning, not just evidence that people sat through a webinar.
4. Annex A.6.4: Early Detection of Disciplinary Issues and Behavioural Risks
The requirement: Organisations must establish clear disciplinary processes for security violations. The challenge is identifying violations early, before they escalate into serious incidents. Many organisations only discover problems when external audits or breach investigations occur.
How Solas OS helps: By monitoring workplace signals, Solas OS identifies behavioural anomalies that often precede security violations. Unusual access patterns, collaboration network changes, or communication shifts can signal distress, disengagement, or malicious intent. This early warning system allows organisations to initiate appropriate support or disciplinary conversations before behaviour becomes problematic.
Why this matters: Gut-feel management relies on personal observation and hindsight. A team member might seem fine to their direct manager but exhibit clear risk signals in their broader collaboration patterns. Solas OS removes bias and subjectivity from the process, flagging genuine risks that managers might otherwise miss.
5. Annex A.6.5: Managing Security Risks Through Role Changes and Termination
The requirement: Personnel leaving the organisation or changing roles present acute security risks. Organisations must ensure that access is promptly revoked, knowledge is transferred securely, and security responsibilities are clearly communicated to replacement staff.
How Solas OS helps: Solas OS tracks collaboration networks and information flow patterns, providing critical intelligence about which data and systems departing employees have accessed, who they have shared knowledge with, and where access can be safely revoked without disrupting critical workflows. When new staff join or are promoted, Solas OS helps identify peers with similar collaboration patterns and responsibilities, ensuring secure knowledge transfer and faster onboarding.
Why this matters: Traditional offboarding checklists often miss critical details. By understanding who worked with what information and who needs to assume responsibility for critical workflows, organisations can execute far more thorough and less disruptive transitions. This reduces both security risk and operational disruption.
6. Annex A.6.7: Maintaining Security Discipline in Remote and Hybrid Environments
The requirement: Remote working arrangements must not compromise information security. Personnel must maintain the same security discipline away from the office as they do in supervised environments, and organisations must monitor that they do so.
How Solas OS helps: Solas OS tracks communication patterns, collaboration frequency, and data access timing across distributed teams. It identifies employees who maintain secure practices regardless of location and flags those whose behaviour changes when working remotely. The system can surface potential security gaps in how remote teams share files, communicate about sensitive information, or maintain system access controls.
Why this matters: Physical presence is no longer a proxy for security compliance. Organisations cannot see what remote workers are doing, which makes behaviour-based monitoring essential. Solas OS provides visibility into how security practices hold up when the office context is removed, and identifies training or process changes needed to maintain the security culture across hybrid workforces.
7. Annex A.6.8: Building a Culture of Security Event Reporting
The requirement: Organisations must foster a culture where security incidents are reported promptly and thoroughly. Many security incidents go unreported because employees fear blame, lack confidence that their concerns will be taken seriously, or simply do not recognise that something is a security problem.
How Solas OS helps: By identifying patterns of underreporting or silence, Solas OS can highlight teams and departments with weak reporting cultures. The system provides evidence about where employees feel safe raising concerns and where barriers exist. This intelligence allows organisations to target interventions, strengthen trust with at-risk teams, and build the psychological safety needed for open incident reporting.
Why this matters: Compliance checklists cannot measure psychological safety or trust. Solas OS reveals the soft human dynamics that determine whether employees actually report security concerns or stay silent. This insight is invaluable for building genuine security cultures where reporting becomes automatic and non-punitive.
8. Clause 7.2: Demonstrating Competence and Capability
The requirement: ISO 27001 Clause 7.2 demands that organisations ensure personnel have the competence needed to maintain information security. This includes security awareness, technical capability, and understanding of security policies. Competence must be documented and evidence-based.
How Solas OS helps: Solas OS provides data-driven evidence of competence by analysing whether employees actually apply security knowledge in their daily work. The system identifies high-performers who consistently follow security best practices and integrate them into training programmes as informal mentors. It also identifies capability gaps where employees understand security principles intellectually but struggle to apply them effectively under real-world pressure.
Why this matters: Traditional competence assessments rely on test scores and certification records. Solas OS demonstrates actual capability by measuring security behaviour at scale. An employee might pass a compliance training assessment but habitually take shortcuts that increase risk. Conversely, staff with lower test scores might consistently execute more secure practices. Real-world behaviour data reveals true competence.
9. Clause 7.3: Raising and Sustaining Security Awareness
The requirement: Organisations must ensure that all personnel are aware of information security policies, objectives, and their individual responsibilities. Awareness must be communicated, understood, and regularly reinforced across the entire workforce.
How Solas OS helps: Solas OS provides a baseline map of actual security awareness by measuring consistency of security behaviours across the organisation. It identifies pockets of strong awareness and clusters of weak awareness, revealing where communication has landed and where it has missed. This allows awareness campaigns to be targeted, iterated based on results, and continuously refined based on behaviour change data.
Why this matters: Generic awareness initiatives often fail because they do not account for different roles, risk profiles, and learning styles. Solas OS reveals which awareness tactics are actually working and where new approaches are needed. Organisations can move from hoping people are aware to demonstrating with data that they are aware and translating awareness into action.
Building Genuine ISO 27001 Compliance Through Human-Centred Insights
ISO 27001 compliance is ultimately about building sustainable information security practices into the fabric of how organisations work. Solas OS makes this possible by turning abstract compliance requirements into concrete, measurable human behaviours. Rather than treating people as a compliance burden, it treats them as the dynamic, observable system they actually are. By monitoring how work really gets done, who actually follows security practices, and where culture is strong or weak, organisations can move beyond checkbox compliance to genuine, resilient information security. The standard demands it. Data now makes it possible.