EvidenceSheet
ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

A.5.1 Policies for information security

An overarching information security policy and a set of topic-specific policies are to be written, signed off by management, made available, brought to the attention of the staff and outside parties they concern, confirmed as received by those people, and revisited on a schedule and whenever something significant changes. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): keeps the direction and backing management gives to information security suitable, adequate and effective against business, legal, regulatory and contractual needs. As an Annex A reference control, it is compared with the controls determined in risk treatment (6.1.3 c) and recorded in the Statement of Applicability as included or excluded, with the justification and implementation status (6.1.3 d); implementation guidance is ISO/IEC 27002:2022 5.1.

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

5
artefacts
0
held by a system
2
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

  • Review records showing the planned interval met and ad hoc reviews after changes in strategy, technology, regulation, risk, threats or incidents, with management review and audit results as inputs · Policy repository / GRC workspace
  • Acknowledgement records from personnel and relevant external parties that they understand and will comply · HR system / LMS

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

  • Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.1, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
  • The top-level information security policy with top management approval, covering the definition, objectives or objective-setting framework, principles, commitments to requirements and continual improvement, role assignments and the exceptions procedure · Policy repository / GRC workspace
  • The register of topic-specific policies with an owner, approving manager and version for each · 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

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.

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10.2 Nonconformity and corrective action · A.5.2 Information security roles and responsibilities