What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.14 Information transfer?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.14, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; The topic-specific information transfer policy and its communication record; Transfer agreements with third parties covering recipient authentication, protection levels, incident liability and labelling; Email and messaging configurations such as encryption of sensitive attachments, blocking of automatic external forwarding and approval rules for public file-sharing or cloud services; Approved courier and transport provider lists with identification and verification procedures.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.14?

Automatic forwarding of email to personal external accounts is not blocked

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.14` Information transfer

Every kind of transfer facility, whether used inside the organization or with outside parties, is to be covered by rules, procedures or agreements for moving information. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): keeps information secure when it is moved within the organization or exchanged with external parties. 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 5.14.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.14. 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

Email and messaging configurations such as encryption of sensitive attachments, blocking of automatic external forwarding and approval rules for public file-sharing or cloud services · Cloud console / configuration management

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.14, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
The topic-specific information transfer policy and its communication record · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Transfer agreements with third parties covering recipient authentication, protection levels, incident liability and labelling · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Approved courier and transport provider lists with identification and verification procedures · 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

Automatic forwarding of email to personal external accounts is not blocked
Staff use unapproved consumer file-sharing tools to send sensitive files
Physical media is shipped without tamper-evident packaging or chain-of-custody records
No agreement exists with partners who routinely exchange sensitive data

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.5.13 Labelling of information · A.5.15 Access control