What this ISO 27701 self-assessment covers

Assess readiness for a Privacy Information Management System (PIMS) extending ISO 27001 with controller and processor privacy controls. It runs to 20 control questions across 6 domains, scored against the 80 requirements that make up ISO 27701, so the percentage you see reflects the size of the standard rather than the length of this questionnaire.

• PIMS Foundation (on ISO 27001) — 4 questions
• PII Controller Controls — 4 questions
• PII Processor Controls — 4 questions
• Data-Subject Rights — 3 questions
• Transfers & Records — 3 questions
• Governance & Accountability — 2 questions

Who it is for

It is built for the person who has been asked where the organisation stands on ISO 27701 and needs a defensible answer this week — typically a security lead, compliance owner, CTO or founder facing a customer security review, a regulator, or a board question. You do not need prior ISO 27701 experience to complete it; the questions are written in plain terms and you can mark anything genuinely out of scope as N/A so it does not count against you.

How to read your score

Readiness is calculated as the proportion of applicable questions answered Yes, so marking items N/A narrows the scope rather than inflating the result. Bands run from Initial through Developing, Defined and Managed to Optimised. The domain breakdown matters more than the headline number: a strong overall score with one weak domain is a more accurate description of most organisations than any single percentage, and it tells you where the work is.

What a self-assessment cannot tell you

This is an indicator, not an audit, and the difference is evidence. A self-assessment records what you believe is in place; an assessor tests whether it operated over a period and asks for the tickets, logs and approvals that prove it. Teams are also, in our experience, consistently optimistic about documentation and access reviews — two areas where the answer feels like Yes until someone asks for the artefact. Use the gap list as the agenda for that conversation.

If the result raises more questions than it answers, Talk to a privacy lead auditor — a scoping conversation is usually quicker than a second self-assessment.