What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.2 Information security roles and responsibilities?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.2, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; A documented roles and responsibilities matrix covering asset protection, specific security processes, risk management and residual risk acceptance, and user duties; Named risk owners with evidence that they accepted residual risks; Documented authorization levels for each security role; Records showing delegated security tasks and the accountable person's confirmation that they were completed correctly.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.2?

Residual risk is accepted by the security team rather than by the business risk owner

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.2` Information security roles and responsibilities

The organization is to define the roles and responsibilities it needs for information security and allocate them to people according to its needs. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): creates an approved, understood structure for implementing, operating and managing information security. 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 5.2.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.2. 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

Named risk owners with evidence that they accepted residual risks · Document repository
Records showing delegated security tasks and the accountable person's confirmation that they were completed correctly · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.2, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
A documented roles and responsibilities matrix covering asset protection, specific security processes, risk management and residual risk acceptance, and user duties · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Documented authorization levels for each security role · 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

Residual risk is accepted by the security team rather than by the business risk owner
Responsibilities are defined in a policy but not communicated to the people who hold them
Delegation happens without any check that the delegated task was performed
People in security roles have no defined competence requirement or development plan

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.5.1 Policies for information security · A.5.3 Segregation of duties