What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 6.1.3 Information security risk treatment?

A risk treatment plan showing the option chosen and the controls determined for each risk; The Statement of Applicability listing necessary controls, inclusion justifications, implementation status and justifications for each excluded Annex A control; Evidence of the comparison of determined controls with Annex A; Risk owner approval of the treatment plan and signed acceptance of residual risks.

What is the most common gap auditors find on 6.1.3?

The SoA justifications are generic and not linked to risks

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Clause 6

`6.1.3` Information security risk treatment

The organization must define and use a risk treatment process to choose suitable treatment options in light of the assessment results; determine every control needed to implement the chosen options (controls can be designed or taken from any source); compare those controls with Annex A to check nothing necessary has been left out (Annex A lists possible controls and is not exhaustive); produce a Statement of Applicability listing the necessary controls, why each is included, whether each is implemented, and why any Annex A control is excluded; draw up a risk treatment plan; and get risk owners to approve the plan and accept the residual risks. Documented information about the process must be retained. The process aligns with the principles and guidelines of ISO 31000.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, 6.1.3. 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

Evidence of the comparison of determined controls with Annex A · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Risk owner approval of the treatment plan and signed acceptance of residual risks · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

A risk treatment plan showing the option chosen and the controls determined for each risk · Policy repository / GRC workspace
The Statement of Applicability listing necessary controls, inclusion justifications, implementation status and justifications for each excluded Annex A control · 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

The SoA justifications are generic and not linked to risks
Exclusions of Annex A controls are unjustified
Residual risk is accepted by the security team instead of risk owners
Implementation status in the SoA does not match reality

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

6.1.2 Information security risk assessment · 6.2 Information security objectives and planning to achieve them