Governance, Risk & Compliance
An ISO 27018 certification consultant is usually engaged for one commercial reason: a customer wants assurance that the personal data they hand to your cloud service will not be used for anything they did not agree to, and that they will be told if a government asks for it.
ISO 27018 is a code of practice for protecting personally identifiable information in public clouds where the provider acts as a processor. Its distinguishing controls are commitments rather than technologies: no use of customer PII for advertising or marketing without express consent, disclosure of sub-processors and the countries data may be processed in, notification of law-enforcement requests unless legally prohibited, and a documented return, transfer and disposal policy.
Because those commitments map directly onto processor obligations under GDPR and India's DPDP Act, certification does double duty. It is contractual assurance for customers and evidence for regulators. It is assessed as an extension of an ISO 27001:2022 ISMS, and pairs naturally with ISO 27017.
Why you need it
01 / 06Any organisation handing personal data to your platform is a controller with legal accountability for that transfer. Independent certification of your processor commitments is far more persuasive than the same promises in your own marketing.
Processing only on instruction, sub-processor transparency, breach notification, return and deletion, and assistance with data subject rights are simultaneously ISO 27018 controls and legal duties under GDPR Article 28 and the DPDP Act.
The commitment to disclose which countries data may be processed in, and to notify customers of law-enforcement requests where the law permits, addresses the concern that dominates cross-border cloud procurement.
Certification converts a recurring, bespoke privacy review into a document, which shortens due diligence for every enterprise deal that follows.
Instrument
02 / 06ISO 27018, GDPR and the DPDP Act ask overlapping questions. The overlap is the work you only have to do once.
What we deliver
03 / 06Where personal data enters your cloud environment, what happens to it, who can reach it, where it is replicated and how long it is kept, assessed against ISO 27018 and against the processor obligations you already carry.
Which services and environments are covered and, critically, where you act as processor and where as controller. The standard addresses public cloud processors; getting that boundary right determines what the certificate means to a customer.
Encryption and key management, access restriction and logging for PII, secure disposal of media, restrictions on the creation of hardcopy, temporary file handling, and the data transmission controls the standard specifies.
The documented commitments that distinguish the standard: no advertising use without express consent, sub-processor disclosure, geographic transparency about processing locations, law-enforcement disclosure notification, and the return, transfer and disposal policy.
The mechanisms by which your customers can meet their own obligations through you: access, correction and deletion requests passed through to the platform, with the timelines and interfaces to serve them.
Training for the engineers and support staff who can reach customer PII, internal audit against the extended scope, and support through the certification body's assessment.
How we run it
04 / 06Gap analysis of PII handling against ISO 27018, including data mapping across the cloud environment. Existing ISO 27001:2022 and privacy programme coverage is credited so the gap is incremental.
Weeks 1-3The boundaries of certification and your role in each processing relationship, documented so the certificate reads unambiguously to a customer reviewing it.
Weeks 3-4The PII-specific technical controls (encryption, access restriction, logging, disposal, transmission and temporary file handling) implemented in the live environment.
Months 1-4The privacy commitments documented and, where they affect customers, reflected in your data processing agreement and public documentation. A commitment that exists only in an internal policy is not the assurance a customer is buying.
Months 2-4Anyone who can access customer PII (engineering, support, operations) trained on what the commitments mean for their daily work, particularly around access, export and disclosure.
Month 4Internal audit, corrective action, and certification assessment alongside your ISO 27001:2022 audit.
Months 5-7Key benefits
05 / 06Which is materially more persuasive in an enterprise privacy review than the same statements made in your own documentation.
The same controls evidence GDPR Article 28 processor duties and DPDP Act obligations, so one programme serves the customer and the regulator.
Where PII lives, who can reach it, how long it is kept, and how it is returned and deleted, answered from a record rather than reconstructed on request.
Tools we use
06 / 06No “latest tech tools”. These are the ones your report will cite, alongside the manual work that a tool cannot do for you.
Standards
Data discovery and mapping
Technical controls
Customer-facing artefacts
Mapping
Why Aphelion
SharedDarshap Nayak, formerly of KPMG, holds a master’s degree in cybersecurity and more than seven years in security operations. Jaimin Somani brings fifteen-plus years of academic and hands-on VAPT. Hemang Desai is an ICT network specialist from Australia. You will meet them, not a logo.
Meet the teamEvery finding arrives with the reproduction steps, the affected asset and the fix, ranked by what it actually reaches in your environment, not by a CVSS number copied from a scanner. You get the report and the raw output, not a summary of a summary.
See how we testAhmedabad and Sharjah, working the same methodology on the same tooling. Indian data-residency requirements and UAE delivery are both ordinary here, and the AphelioNYX AD Pen-Test module runs entirely inside your perimeter when regulation says it must.
The platformInvent a statistic to make a slide land. Publish your name as a client without written permission. Print an award badge nobody awarded. Founded in 2024. We say so, and we attribute experience to the people who have it.
Ask us anythingAcross the globe, and across eight industries. We name a client only with their written permission.
AphelioNYX is SOC 2, ISO and GDPR compliant; attestations are available on request under NDA. We would rather hand you the report than print a badge.
Questions
FAQNext door
RelatedA personalised walkthrough and a free readiness assessment against the frameworks you are actually being asked for. Pick a time that suits you, or write to us. We reply within one business day.