Which comes first in risk assessment: threat or asset?
ISO 27001 does not prescribe any method for risk assessment, which means your method is acceptable and you should use it if you feel comfortable with it.
However, with such approach you might miss some very specific threats related to some "smaller" assets, which could bring higher risks - for example, smart phones.
Therefore, you could perhaps choose this method: first list all the threats you can think of and include them in the catalog in the Risk assessment table; once this is finished you can start listing all the assets and connect related threats and vulnerabilities with those assets.
I'm not sure if I understood your situation correctly, but here are the answers:
If a location has changed, this means you have to change your ISMS scope.
For any significant change a risk assessment has to be performed/reviewed, which will most probably result with new required controls.
The fact that the third party service provider is ISO 27001 certified doesn't change much - still a risk assessment must be performed, and risks related with a third party must be addressed in the agreement.
Yes, you are correct - if you reviewed the policy and no changes were needed, then there is no need to republish such a document. This is basically true for any of your policies and procedures.
However:
1) I find it quite difficult to believe there would be nothing to change in a document after a one-year period.
2) Even if there is absolutely nothing to change, you should have some kind of a record that particular person has reviewed the policy and that the conclusion is there were no changes needed - this could also be done through email.
I'm not really sure what is required by SOC 2, but in ISO 22301 the Business continuity policy has a very different function from the Business continuity plan, and therefore these two documents are normally separated.
However, merging those two documents is not forbidden in ISO 22301 - therefore you could theoretically do it although it would be a bit strange and impractical.
You do not need to document each control - otherwise you would end up with numerous documents which would become an overkill for you. For instance, you could choose backup as applicable control, and define in the SoA that you will perform backup every 24 hours, but you do not need to write a policy or a procedure for it.
You need to define the scope before your risk assessment, because you need to know for which areas/departments of your company you need to perform the risk assessment.
Regarding policies, you will write only the top-level Information security policy before the risk assessment, all the other policies you need to write after the risk assessment.
Second, information security risks are only a subset of enterprise risks - therefore, you cannot cover all the enterprise risks with information security risk assessment.
Therefore, in my opinion the bes t solution is to use more detailed methodology (e.g. asset based or similar) for information security risk assessment, and use some other methodology for other risks in your company.
Merging internal audit and information security officer function
As a part of ISMF, I have thought of following representatives :-
1. IT - infrastructure, application and operations
2. Business
3. HR
4. Compliance
5. Admin
6. Internal Control or Audit
I assume that by "ISMF" you mean a coordination body for your information security - in this case, yes - I think you have chosen a good balance of people; only I think Internal audit should not be a part of it - again because of conflict of interest.
Design compliance plan for internal use
Kumar, it is neither option 1 nor 2.
You should start with assessing the risks, because the whole idea of ISO 27001 is centered on risk assessment - once you perform the risk assessment you will know exactly which kind of information security standards/policies/procedures you will need to implement. See this article for details: The basic logic of ISO 27001: How does information security work? https://advisera.com/27001academy/knowledgebase/the-basic-logic-of-iso-27001-how-does-information-security-work/