What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.5 Contact with authorities?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.5, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; A register of relevant authorities (law enforcement, regulators, supervisory bodies, utilities, emergency services) with current contact details; A procedure stating when each authority is contacted, by whom, and the reporting timelines for incidents; Records of incident notifications made to authorities and their timing; Records of engagement used to track current and upcoming regulatory expectations.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.5?

Contact details are stale or held only by one individual

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.5` Contact with authorities

The organization is to set up and keep up working contact with the authorities that are relevant to it. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): ensures information security information flows properly between the organization and legal, regulatory and supervisory authorities. 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 5.5.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.5. 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

Records of incident notifications made to authorities and their timing · Document repository

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Records of engagement used to track current and upcoming regulatory expectations · Regulator portal / correspondence

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.5, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
A register of relevant authorities (law enforcement, regulators, supervisory bodies, utilities, emergency services) with current contact details · Policy repository / GRC workspace
A procedure stating when each authority is contacted, by whom, and the reporting timelines for incidents · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Mostly documents and reviews. Pull the 1 system-held artefact from your Document repository 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

Contact details are stale or held only by one individual
No defined decision point or owner for notifying a regulator, so notifications miss statutory deadlines
Utilities and emergency services are omitted from the continuity contact list
Regulatory horizon scanning is not linked to the authority relationships

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.5.4 Management responsibilities · A.5.6 Contact with special interest groups