What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.13 Labelling of information?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.13, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; Labelling procedures covering all formats, with rules on placement, exemptions and cases where labelling is not possible; Examples of labelled documents, emails, reports and media showing the chosen techniques such as headers, watermarks or metadata; Configuration of labelling or data classification tooling that applies metadata and enforces handling decisions; Evidence that sensitive system outputs such as reports and exports carry classification labels.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.13?

Labels exist on documents but not in metadata, so DLP and other systems cannot act on them

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.13` Labelling of information

Procedures for labelling information are to be developed and put into effect in line with the classification scheme the organization has adopted. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): communicates information classification and supports automated processing and management of information. 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 5.13.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.13. 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

Configuration of labelling or data classification tooling that applies metadata and enforces handling decisions · Cloud console / configuration management

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Evidence that sensitive system outputs such as reports and exports carry classification labels · Data governance / DLP tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.13, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Labelling procedures covering all formats, with rules on placement, exemptions and cases where labelling is not possible · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Examples of labelled documents, emails, reports and media showing the chosen techniques such as headers, watermarks or metadata · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Mostly documents and reviews. Pull the 1 system-held artefact from your Cloud console / configuration management on a schedule; put the documents under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Labels exist on documents but not in metadata, so DLP and other systems cannot act on them
Reports and data exports from business systems carry no label
Labelling rules for physical media and paper are missing
Users are never trained, so labels are applied inconsistently or not at all

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.5.12 Classification of information · A.5.14 Information transfer