What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.4 Management responsibilities?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.4, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; Evidence that security briefings on roles and responsibilities occur before access is granted, such as onboarding checklists tied to access provisioning; Role-specific guidance documents setting out security expectations; Signed employment contracts or agreements containing the security obligations; Records of continuing professional education for staff in security-relevant roles.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.4?

Access is provisioned before any security briefing takes place

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.4` Management responsibilities

Managers are to insist that everyone working for the organization applies information security as the organization's policy, topic-specific policies and procedures lay down. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): ensures managers understand their information security role and act so that all personnel know and meet their responsibilities. 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 5.4.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.4. 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

Evidence that security briefings on roles and responsibilities occur before access is granted, such as onboarding checklists tied to access provisioning · Identity provider / directory
Records of continuing professional education for staff in security-relevant roles · Identity provider / directory

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.4, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Role-specific guidance documents setting out security expectations · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Signed employment contracts or agreements containing the security obligations · 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

Access is provisioned before any security briefing takes place
No confidential route exists for reporting violations, or reporters' identities are not protected
Managers do not visibly endorse the policies, so compliance is seen as the security team's concern
Security work is expected without any allocated time or resource in project plans

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.5.3 Segregation of duties · A.5.5 Contact with authorities