ISO/IEC 27018 Compliance
Protection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in the Cloud
What is ISO/IEC 27018?
ISO/IEC 27018 is an international standard focused on the protection of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) in cloud computing environments. It builds on ISO/IEC 27002 and provides specific guidance for cloud service providers acting as PII processors.
Its goal is to ensure that personal data is managed and protected in line with privacy principles, transparency, and regulatory requirements.
Key ISO/IEC 27018 requirements:
- Consent and Transparency: Cloud customers must know how their PII is processed, stored, and accessed.
- Data Subject Rights: Enable individuals to exercise rights such as access, correction, and deletion of their data.
- Purpose Limitation: Ensure PII is processed only for agreed-upon purposes.
- Data Security Controls: Apply strong access control, encryption, and monitoring to protect PII.
- Data Breach Notification: Ensure prompt reporting of incidents involving personal data.
How Visual Guard facilitates ISO/IEC 27018 compliance:
Access governance:
Restrict who can access PII using fine-grained, role-based permissions.
Authentication and MFA:
Enforce strong authentication mechanisms to secure access to personal data.
Traceability and audit logs:
Record all access to and modifications of PII for accountability and compliance evidence.
Support for rights management:
Facilitate restriction or deletion of user accounts and associated data upon request.
Policy enforcement:
Align application access rules with privacy policies and contractual commitments.
Detailed technical capabilities
Access Governance
- Fine-grained permissions at field or record level
- Restrict access based on business roles and operational context
- Enforce segregation of duties (SoD) for sensitive roles
- Log all access and operations involving PII
Strong & Federated Authentication
- MFA using OTP (email, SMS, app) or hardware tokens
- Federated authentication and SSO with Active Directory, Entra ID, SAML 2.0, OAuth 2.0, OpenID Connect
Identity Lifecycle & Privacy Rights
- Automate account de-provisioning to support the “right to be forgotten”
- Restrict or disable accounts upon data subject requests
Logging & Accountability
- Record all PII-related operations in immutable audit logs
- Generate exportable reports for auditors, regulators, and contractual obligations
Contextual Access Controls
- Adaptive rules based on role, department, location, time, or device
Use case
Protecting PII in a healthcare cloud application
A healthcare software vendor offers a cloud platform managing patient records across multiple hospitals. To comply with ISO/IEC 27018, it must enforce strict access control to sensitive PII, ensure accountability for all operations, and provide evidence of compliance to clients and regulators.
How Visual Guard helped:
- Defined role-based permissions for doctors, nurses, and administrators.
- Enforced MFA for all users accessing patient data.
- Logged every access and modification of patient records.
- Automated account de-provisioning when staff leave or change roles, supporting the “right to be forgotten”.
- Provided compliance dashboards and reports for auditors and clients.
Result: The healthcare vendor ensured secure handling of patient data, strengthened trust with clients, and simplified external audits by demonstrating ISO/IEC 27018 compliance.