What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.27 Learning from information security incidents?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.27, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; A procedure for quantifying and monitoring incident types, volumes and costs, with the resulting metrics or dashboards; Post-incident review reports identifying causes and recommended improvements; Changes to the risk assessment and to the treatment plan for risks, each traceable to a specific incident; Records of new or strengthened controls implemented after recurring or serious incidents.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.27?

Incident costs are never captured, so trends and business impact are unknown

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.27` Learning from information security incidents

What the organization learns from its information security incidents is to be fed back to strengthen and improve its security controls. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): makes future incidents less likely or less harmful. 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 5.27.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.27. 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

Post-incident review reports identifying causes and recommended improvements · Document repository
Records of new or strengthened controls implemented after recurring or serious incidents · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.27, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
A procedure for quantifying and monitoring incident types, volumes and costs, with the resulting metrics or dashboards · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Changes to the risk assessment and to the treatment plan for risks, each traceable to a specific incident · 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

Incident costs are never captured, so trends and business impact are unknown
Lessons are written up but the resulting actions are not tracked to completion
The risk assessment is not revisited after significant incidents
Recurring incident types are handled individually without any cause analysis

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.5.26 Response to information security incidents · A.5.28 Collection of evidence