What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.19 Information security in supplier relationships?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.19, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; The topic-specific supplier relationship policy and its communication record; A supplier inventory categorized by type and by the information, services and infrastructure each can access; Supplier due diligence and selection records such as questionnaires, certifications, references and on-site assessment reports, scaled to sensitivity; Supplier risk assessments covering misuse of organizational assets and product or component vulnerabilities.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.19?

Suppliers are onboarded by procurement without any security assessment

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.19` Information security in supplier relationships

The organization is to define and run processes and procedures that manage the information security risks arising from using suppliers' products or services. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): keeps security in supplier dealings at the level agreed with the supplier. 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 5.19.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.19. 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

Vendor register / contract repository

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

Supplier due diligence and selection records such as questionnaires, certifications, references and on-site assessment reports, scaled to sensitivity · Vendor register / contract repository
Supplier risk assessments covering misuse of organizational assets and product or component vulnerabilities · Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.19, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
The topic-specific supplier relationship policy and its communication record · Vendor register / contract repository
A supplier inventory categorized by type and by the information, services and infrastructure each can access · Vendor register / contract 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

Suppliers are onboarded by procurement without any security assessment
Cloud service providers are not treated as suppliers under the policy
No exit plan exists for critical suppliers, so access and data linger after termination
Monitoring stops after onboarding and relies solely on an annual certificate

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.5.18 Access rights · A.5.20 Addressing information security within supplier agreements