5.1 Leadership and commitment
Top management has to show leadership of and commitment to the ISMS by: making sure the security policy and objectives exist and fit the organization's strategic direction; building ISMS requirements into business processes; making the needed resources available; communicating why effective security management and conformity with ISMS requirements matter; making sure the ISMS achieves what it is meant to; directing and supporting people to contribute to its effectiveness; promoting continual improvement; and supporting other managers in showing leadership in their own areas. A note explains that business can be read broadly as the activities core to the organization's existence.
Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, 5.1. The statement above is our statement of the clause, read from the published text and cited so you can check it against the official text, not the instrument verbatim. Open ISO/IEC 27001:2022 in the compliance library.
Clauses 4 to 10 are the management-system requirements: none of them can be excluded when an organisation claims conformity. The 93 Annex A controls are a reference set: one may be excluded with a justification in the Statement of Applicability. Certification bodies assess conformity; the evidence lists here are what auditors commonly ask for, not a list the standard prescribes.
These are the artefacts auditors commonly ask for on this requirement, our guidance rather than text from the standard. Your assessor decides what is sufficient in your context, and asks for samples across the period when a report covers one.
system holds itEvidence a system already holds
none for this control
periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review
- Board or executive minutes approving the security policy and objectives and showing their alignment with strategy · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- Budget and resource approvals for the ISMS · Document repository
- Evidence of ISMS requirements embedded in business processes, such as security steps in procurement or project approval · Document repository
- Records of top management participation in management reviews and improvement decisions · Document repository
governing documentDocuments that govern the control
- Communications from top management about the importance of information security · Document repository
First move
Common gaps auditors find
- Leadership is delegated entirely to the security manager
- Resource requests go unanswered and no allocation is recorded
- Top management never communicates about information security
- Objectives are not linked to the business strategy
Do this for your whole sheet
Paste the rows you run your controls from and get this mapping for every control at once, with the periodic-review ones flagged and a first move per row. No account for the first run.
Build my evidence sheet