ISO42001
AI Governance You Can Certify — and Demonstrate
ISO/IEC 42001 is the management-system standard for trustworthy AI. Stand up an AI management system with an AI system registry, model cards, risk classification, and bias testing — on a platform that governs its own AI the same way.
Who needs it: Any organization deploying AI in products or operations — especially SaaS vendors whose enterprise customers now ask AI questions in security reviews, and AI companies selling globally.
What is ISO 42001?
ISO/IEC 42001:2023 is the world's first certifiable management-system standard for artificial intelligence (an AIMS — AI Management System). Like ISO 27001 for information security, it uses the Annex SL structure: organizational context, leadership and AI policy, planning, support, operation, performance evaluation, and continual improvement — plus Annex A controls covering the AI system lifecycle, impact assessments, data and model governance, and third-party AI.
It certifies how you govern AI rather than any single model: AI inventories, documented risk and impact assessments, human oversight, transparency to affected parties, and supplier due diligence. That makes it complementary to the EU AI Act (a law you must comply with) and NIST AI RMF (a voluntary framework) — one management system can evidence all three.
Demand is commercial, not theoretical: enterprise buyers now push AI-governance questionnaires onto every vendor that ships AI features. A working AIMS turns those questionnaires from a fire drill into a lookup.
What you'll need to satisfy.
The core categories ISO 42001 auditors evaluate — and what we ship to cover each one.
AIMS Core (Clauses 4–10)
- Organizational context and scope of the AIMS
- Leadership commitment and AI policy
- Planning: AI risk and opportunity treatment
- Support: competence, awareness, documentation
- Operational planning and control
- Performance evaluation and internal audit
- Management review and continual improvement
AI System Lifecycle
- AI system inventory and registry
- Design and development controls
- Verification and validation
- Deployment and monitoring
- Decommissioning and retirement
AI Impact Assessment
- System impact assessments for individuals and society
- Affected-party analysis
- Risk classification and documented treatment
- Records maintained for auditors and regulators
Data & Model Governance
- Training-data provenance and quality
- Model documentation and model cards
- Bias and fairness testing
- Human oversight of AI decisions
Third-Party AI
- Supplier AI due diligence
- API and model vendor management
- Transparency obligations to customers
- Contractual AI commitments tracked
The problem we solve.
Why teams pick Compliance Enablers for ISO 42001 compliance.
Common challenges
- Enterprise security reviews now include AI-governance sections — "show us your AI policy and inventory" is the new "show us your SOC 2"
- The EU AI Act timeline overlaps your ISO 42001 work, and running them as separate projects doubles the effort
- AI inventories live in spreadsheets — nobody can say which models, vendors, and use cases are actually in production
- Most GRC tools bolted AI governance on as a policy-template pack: no registry, no model cards, no testing workflows
What we provide
- AI Governance module operational today: AI system registry, model cards, risk classification, and bias testing workflows
- EU AI Act risk-classification support that doubles as your ISO 42001 impact-assessment groundwork
- NIST AI RMF and EU AI Act in the native framework library, with the SCF crosswalk to your existing ISO 27001 controls
- Policy and procedure templates for AI acceptable use, AI development, and model lifecycle management
- Risk register integration: AI risks scored and treated alongside your full risk program
- ISO 42001 readiness assessment rolling out on the AI Governance module — built on the same gap-assessment engine as ISO 27001
- We hold ourselves to the same standard: Sage AI runs under documented governance — provider disclosed (Anthropic Claude), actions logged, humans approving
From kickoff to
audit-ready.
Step-by-step, exactly how we'll get you there.
AI Inventory
Register every AI system, model, vendor, and use case in the AI Governance registry — the single source of truth your auditors and customers will ask for.
Risk Classification
Classify each system by risk. EU AI Act tier work doubles as ISO 42001 impact-assessment groundwork.
Policy & Controls
Deploy AI policy templates and map controls onto your existing ISMS — Annex SL means the management system is shared.
Impact Assessments
Run AI system impact assessments with affected-party analysis and documented treatment decisions.
Testing & Oversight
Bias testing workflows, model cards, and human-oversight gates — operational controls, not shelf-ware documents.
Audit Readiness
Internal audit and management review on the same engine you use for ISO 27001 — one cadence, two certificates.
framework
ISO 42001 follows the same Annex SL management-system structure as ISO 27001 — your ISMS clause 4–10 work carries straight over. We show you exactly what is net-new.
Most platforms treat AI governance as a policy-template pack. Compliance Enablers ships a working AI Governance module — registry, model cards, risk classification, bias testing — and applies it to its own AI: Sage AI runs on Anthropic Claude with disclosed data flows, logged actions, and human approval. Governance you can inspect, not a marketing page.
Key modules for ISO 42001.
Everything these modules ship, included in every tier.
ISO 42001 FAQ
Get ISO 42001
audit-ready.
AI inventory and governance baseline in days. 513 pre-generated policies. 50+ evidence collectors. Everything you need to pass ISO 42001, out of the box.