What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.36 Compliance with policies, rules and standards for information security?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.36, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; A compliance review plan identifying which managers or owners review which policies, rules and standards and how often; Compliance review results, including output from automated measurement or configuration compliance tools; Non-compliance records with root causes, corrective actions, owners and target dates; Evidence that corrective actions were reviewed for effectiveness.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.36?

Compliance checks are left entirely to the security team rather than line managers and owners

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.36` Compliance with policies, rules and standards for information security

How well the organization keeps to its security policy and to its topic policies, rules and standards is to be checked regularly. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): confirms security is put in place and run as the organization's policies, rules and standards require. 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 5.36.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.36. 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

Non-compliance records with root causes, corrective actions, owners and target dates · Policy repository / GRC workspace

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

A compliance review plan identifying which managers or owners review which policies, rules and standards and how often · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Compliance review results, including output from automated measurement or configuration compliance tools · Cloud console / configuration management
Evidence that corrective actions were reviewed for effectiveness · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.36, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Mostly documents and reviews. Pull the 1 system-held artefact from your Policy repository / GRC workspace 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

Compliance checks are left entirely to the security team rather than line managers and owners
Non-compliances are fixed without identifying causes, so they recur
Corrective actions slip indefinitely with no follow-up
Technical standards such as hardening baselines are never measured against actual configurations

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.5.35 Independent review of information security · A.5.37 Documented operating procedures