What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.11 Return of assets?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.11, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; The leaver and mover procedure with an asset return step and a checklist of assets issued to each person; Signed asset return records reconciled against the asset inventory; Records of information transferred from and securely wiped on personally owned or purchased devices; Knowledge transfer or handover documentation for departing staff holding operationally important knowledge.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.11?

Asset return is not reconciled against what was issued, so missing items go unnoticed

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.11` Return of assets

When their employment, contract or agreement changes or ends, staff and, where relevant, other interested parties are to hand back every organizational asset they hold. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): protects organizational assets when employment, contracts or agreements change or end. 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 5.11.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.11. 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

Signed asset return records reconciled against the asset inventory · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Records of information transferred from and securely wiped on personally owned or purchased devices · Endpoint management (MDM / EDR)

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.11, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
The leaver and mover procedure with an asset return step and a checklist of assets issued to each person · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Knowledge transfer or handover documentation for departing staff holding operationally important knowledge · Document repository

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

Asset return is not reconciled against what was issued, so missing items go unnoticed
BYOD devices of leavers still hold organizational data
Nothing prevents bulk downloads by staff under notice
Contractors and third-party staff are excluded from the return process

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

A.5.10 Acceptable use of information and other associated assets · A.5.12 Classification of information