With the proliferation of AI into so many business-critical systems, the ability to understand, measure, and mitigate the risks of AI is more important than ever. It’s something we at Whistic understand intimately as a solution that both employs cutting-edge AI AND helps our customers gauge third-party risk.

The ISO/IEC 42001 certification is the most robust standard for taking on the critical challenge of AI risk management. That’s why we are so excited to announce that Whistic is ISO 42001 certified—distinguishing us as a transparent and trustworthy partner for AI-first capabilities.

Whether you’re using AI yourself or considering vendors that use AI in their solutions, it’s helpful to understand what the ISO 42001 certification is, what it means, and what to do if you’re looking to become certified.

What is ISO/IEC 42001?

ISO 42001 is the first international standard for managing artificial intelligence within organizations. First published in December 2023, it provides a framework for establishing, implementing, maintaining, and continuously improving an AI Management System (AIMS).

It’s intended for any organization that designs, develops, or deploys AI systems and seeks to ensure responsible, trustworthy, and ethical AI practices. With its emphasis on traceability and transparency, ISO 42001 requires organizations to maintain visibility into how their AI systems operate, make decisions, and evolve over time.

It addresses these considerations by documenting several dimensions of AI use, including:

AI-specific risk-management practices
Establishment of ethical and trustworthy AI practices
Development of governance structures for AI
Lifecycle controls from design to deployment
Accountability and explainability for AI outputs
Human oversight of AI systems
Data-quality and privacy standards
Compliance with regulatory frameworks

What does ISO 42001 look like in practice?

So, what does the certification process look like, and what are the characteristics of an ISO 42001-compliant organization? Whistic is an AI-first third-party risk management platform, which means we have integrated AI capabilities with vendor security-assessment workflows to automate manual steps and drive decision-making insight.

That’s a long way of saying AI is a major part of our product offering, so for a better understanding of the ISO 42001 certification process, we’ll focus on our own experiences across four major categories: transparent decision-making, ethical AI principles, robust risk management, and enhanced governance controls.

1. Transparent decision-making
ISO 42001 emphasizes the transparency and traceability of AIMs; organizations like Whistic that utilize AI must maintain visibility into how AI systems operate, how they make decisions, and how they evolve over time.

During the certification process, we implemented processes to ensure our AI offering was fully transparent, including:

Documenting AI response to assessment queries. The AI in the Whistic Platform is deployed in a suite of capabilities called Assessment Copilot that make it possible to automate responses to assessment questionnaires using a wide range of security data sources. For our certification, we clearly documented how Copilot generates the responses it does.

In fact, this transparency is a critical feature of the product itself. Every automated assessment response comes with a confidence score, rationale for the response, and full citations that allow for a human audit and validation.
Create and maintain logs for explainability and accuracy. This was an extension of the documentation process, but explainability is essential for any future audits of Whistic AIMs. It’s an important point of reference for users who wish to understand how the AI operates. We also issued a thorough accuracy statement, which outlines the full capabilities of our AI model, limitations of the model, and guidelines for appropriate use.
User control over inputs. Whistic AI references risk-management data provided by vendors to respond to security questions. We designed our AI systems to only reference approved documentation to arrive at responses; this means that our customers maintain total control over all data inputs and eliminates the “black box” ambiguity that can be found in other AI systems.
Documenting data flow and inventory. We created a detailed flow diagram for every tool and data set that is used to deliver AI-powered features. This provides visibility across the entire technical stack.

2. Ethical AI principles
ISO 42001 requires safeguards to minimize bias and promote fairness, particularly when AI impacts individuals, groups, or critical business outcomes.

To ensure ethical AI in our products, Whistic:

Embedded structured processes to detect and assess bias during data sourcing, model training, and inference.
Aligned fairness objectives with governance and risk frameworks.
Performed data audits for representativeness and potential proxy discrimination.
Enabled human-in-the-loop oversight to validate results and catch bias in real-world usage.
Implemented safeguards to avoid building in assumptions when data or sources are conflicting or incomplete—in such cases, we have trained our AI to make no conclusions and present all relevant sources for user review and final confirmation.

3. Robust risk management
ISO 42001 mandates a structured process for identifying, assessing, and mitigating AI-related risks across the system lifecycle. Here are the risk-management steps we took to ensure we met these high standards:

Conducted a formal AI risk assessment and documented risk treatment plans
Defined acceptable risk thresholds and retained records of residual risk
Performed a comprehensive AI system-impact assessment to evaluate the potential consequences for individuals, groups, and society.

4. Enhanced governance controls
Strong internal governance is a core requirement under ISO 42001; it helps to ensure oversight, accountability, and ongoing compliance over time. The Whistic AI governance controls include:

Defined roles, responsibilities, and escalation procedures for AI oversight
A formal AI policy aligned to ethical, legal, and operational goals
Integrated AI governance into core business operations, with monitoring and audit mechanisms across the entire AI lifecycle
Integrated the AI development lifecycle into our broader risk management framework, which is itself backed by validated ISO 27001 certification
Governance embedded in all engineering workflows; it’s important to note here that this was not done as a one-time compliance exercise. Instead, Whistic has created an entire operational discipline co-developed with our product and engineering teams.

Why ISO 42001 matters to AI users and customers

AI is one of the most potentially transformative technologies that has ever existed. While that is an exciting prospect, it's also one that should be treated with respect, due diligence, and proper caution.

ISO 42001 creates a framework for doing just that; in short, it ensures that everyone realizes the value of AI safely, ethically, and consistently. Whistic customers see the benefits of ISO certification across each of the four core areas we just discussed:

Transparency—Customers gain complete visibility and control over how AI decisions are made, what data is being used in the AIMS, and how outputs are produced; this allows for confident, responsible AI adoption.
AI ethics—Creating an ethical AI framework ensures that systems are fair, accountable, and inclusive. We’ve taken further steps to ensure that, when facts aren’t entirely clear or supported by evidence, our AI will not guess; instead, it defers to the user. This helps users avoid downstream errors and supports responsible, defensible outcomes.
Risk management—Documented risk-management policies create safeguards that anticipate and address emerging threats and ensure a consistent, disciplined approach to using AIMS.
Governance—Strong governance goes deeper than minimum compliance; governance means alignment from the top of the organization down to the end user, supported by ongoing training, clear procedures, and a deeply integrated approach to risk. This helps to deliver long-term confidence and trust while also giving you the foundational pieces to adapt to new circumstances.

The ISO 42001 Readiness Checklist

If you are thinking about obtaining your ISO 42001 certification or simply wish to better understand what you should expect from your AI vendors, this practical checklist helps organizations prepare for the process. It maps to the standard's structure and highlights essential activities for compliance.

Step 1: Understanding organizational context

Identify relevant internal and external issues affecting AI usage
Define stakeholders in AI decision-making and their requirements regarding AI
Determine the overall scope of the AIMS you intend to develop (or that your vendor uses)

Step 2: Leadership and governance

Assign leadership responsibilities for AIMS
Establish and communicate an AI policy that supports ethical and responsible use (you’ll need to document this process for certification)
Clearly define roles, authorities, and lines of accountability

Step 3: Planning

Do a full audit and report on both AI-related risks and opportunities
Set measurable AI objectives and plan actions to achieve and update them
Integrate risk-management practices across the entire AI lifecycle

Step 4: Supporting AI strategies

Allocate resources to establish and maintain AIMS
Ensure staff are competent in AI ethics, safety, risk, and governance and support them with an ongoing training program
Create awareness of AIMS objectives across the organization (also supported by training)
Implement internal and external communication procedures
Maintain documented information (e.g., policies, procedures, records)

Step 5: Building operational controls

Define and control AI lifecycle stages (design, development, deployment, monitoring)
Perform AI-specific risk assessments (bias, safety, legal, ethical)
Ensure transparency, explainability, and human oversight in AI systems
Maintain data quality and privacy throughout training and use
Establish incident response for AI-related failures or adverse outcomes

Step 6: Evaluating performance

Monitor and measure AIMS effectiveness based on your established context and performance metrics
Conduct regular internal audits of the AIMS
Perform management reviews to assess outcomes and improvements

Step 7: Ensuring ongoing improvement

Identify and correct nonconformities
Take corrective actions and review effectiveness
Drive continual improvement in AI governance and risk management

Make AI a safe, transparent accelerator for your TPRM program

As the industry’s leader in AI-first third-party risk management, Whistic understands the value of meeting standards like ISO 42001. We also have built our product around the value that AI can deliver with our Assessment Copilot Suite. We’re proud to be among the first organizations in our space to be ISO 42001 certified.

You can learn more about our safe, transparent, and ethical approach to AI here. And if you’re interested in seeing how Whistic AI automates vendor risk assessments, saving you time, money, and risk, simply schedule some time with our team and we’ll show you how it works.