NIS2 (Cyberbeveiligingswet) vs ISO 27001: Overlaps and differences

What is ISO 27001?

ISO/IEC 27001, introduced by International Organization for Standardization (ISO), is an international standard for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continuously improving an information security management system (ISMS). An ISMS is a framework that is designed to manage, monitor, and protect an organization’s sensitive data.

Unlike NIS2, this standard applies to organizations of all sizes and industries.

What is NIS2?

The NIS2 Directive, introduced by the European Union, is a cybersecurity legislation aimed at achieving a high common level of cybersecurity across member states. The compliance mandate applies to essential and important entities across sectors such as energy, transport, public administration, and ICT service providers.

The NIS2 Directive will be implemented as the Cbw in the Netherlands. The act is expected to be enforced as national law by Q2 2026.

How are NIS2 and ISO 27001 related?

Both NIS2 and ISO 27001 focus on one objective: Help organizations prepare to stand against cyberthreats. Below are the overlaps between these two regulations:

• Risk management: Risk assessments and remediation to mitigate identified risks.
• Incident management: Detecting, managing, and responding to security incidents.
• Business continuity: Resilience planning, including backup, recovery, and crisis management strategies.
• Access control: Strict identity and access management policies.

Preamble 79 of the NIS2 Directive recommends implementing cybersecurity measures according to standards including the ISO 27000 series. However, there are also differences between these two regulations.

ISO 27001 vs. NIS2

Here are the key differences between ISO 27001 and NIS2:

Does ISO 27001 compliance ensure NIS2 compliance?

No—ISO 27001 compliance does not automatically ensure NIS2 compliance. While ISO 27001 provides a strong foundation, NIS2 introduces additional legal, reporting, governance, and sector-specific obligations that must be addressed separately.

Companies certified under ISO 27001 will have a significant head start, but they must also ensure they meet the NIS2 requirements to avoid administrative fines. The directive states, "Non-compliant essential entities under NIS2 can be fined up to 10 million euros or 2% of their annual revenue."

How ManageEngine Log360 helps you comply with ISO 27001 and NIS2

ManageEngine Log360 is a SIEM solution that offers extensive log management capabilities that helps you align with both ISO 27001 and NIS2 requirements efficiently.

Strengthen threat intelligence

1. With Log360, gather global threat intelligence from Webroot, STIX/TAXII, VirusTotal, AlienVault OTX, and Constella .
2. Use threat intelligence context to validate and categorize alerts by severity (Critical, Trouble, Attention) for faster triage.
3. Identify risky configurations in your Windows Server, Azure, AWS, and GCP configurations .
4. Uncover insider threats and compromised accounts by spotting deviations from normal behavior using UEBA.

Enhance threat detection and implement preemptive attack response

1. Log360's Security Analytics provides a centralized, at-a-glance view of your threat landscape, allowing you to see events in context and understand your security posture through rich visualizations.
2. Integration with MITRE ATT&CK framework provides the precise information about the active attack for effective response and mitigation.
3. Leverage the Attack Surface Analyzer to detect credential access attacks like Kerberoasting, lateral movement attacks, and privilege escalation attacks.
4. Configure triggered alerts based on thresholds or a group of security events based on your organizational policies.

Granular auditing and monitoring

1. Gain insights and generate comprehensive audit reports by collecting and analyzing logs from various sources in your environment.
2. Collect and analyze logs from various sources in your environment, including end-user devices, and get insights in the form of graphs and intuitive reports that help spot security threats.
3. Configure scheduled reports to be prepared at all times for internal policies or ISO 27001 and/or NIS2 compliance audits.

Govern and monitor activities performed by identities

1. Track activities performed by users across both on-premises and cloud environments from a single console.
2. Monitor activities performed by identities such as file accesses, modifications, logons etc.
3. Audit high-priveleged user activities such as administrators, technicians across various AD objects.