What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 6.1.2 Information security risk assessment?

A documented risk assessment methodology stating the criteria for accepting risk and the criteria for how assessments are carried out; A risk register naming each risk, its owner, consequence, likelihood and resulting level; Evaluation records comparing risk levels with the criteria and prioritizing treatment; Evidence that repeated assessments use the same scales and give comparable results.

What is the most common gap auditors find on 6.1.2?

Acceptance criteria are undefined, so acceptance is decided case by case

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Clause 6

`6.1.2` Information security risk assessment

The organization must define and use a risk assessment process that sets and keeps risk criteria, covering both acceptance criteria and criteria for carrying out assessments; gives consistent, valid and comparable results when repeated; identifies, within the ISMS scope, the risks that come from information losing its confidentiality, integrity or availability, and names an owner for each; analyses them by judging potential consequences and realistic likelihood and deciding the level of risk; and evaluates them by comparing the analysis with the criteria and ranking them for treatment. Documented information about the process must be retained.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, 6.1.2. 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.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

hard

to go live

Policy repository / GRC workspace

where the evidence lives

teal = a system already holds it · olive = produced at each review. To go live: easy when half or more of the artefacts are already held by a system, moderate from a quarter to a half, hard below a quarter.

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

Evaluation records comparing risk levels with the criteria and prioritizing treatment · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Evidence that repeated assessments use the same scales and give comparable results · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

A documented risk assessment methodology stating the criteria for accepting risk and the criteria for how assessments are carried out · Policy repository / GRC workspace
A risk register naming each risk, its owner, consequence, likelihood and resulting level · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

No system holds this evidence for you: it is people and documents. Reminders and routing to the owner still save time. Put the document under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a record with reviewer and date.

Common gaps auditors find

Acceptance criteria are undefined, so acceptance is decided case by case
Risks lack named owners
The method changes every year, so results cannot be compared
Risks are identified for assets but never linked to a loss of availability, integrity or confidentiality

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

6.1.1 Actions to address risks and opportunities: general · 6.1.3 Information security risk treatment