What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.7 Threat intelligence?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.7, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; Documented threat intelligence objectives and a process covering collection, processing, analysis and dissemination; A list of vetted internal and external intelligence sources with the rationale for selection; Threat intelligence outputs at strategic, tactical and operational levels, such as landscape briefings, attacker technique summaries and indicator feeds; Evidence that intelligence updated the risk assessment or risk register.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.7?

Feeds are subscribed to but nobody analyses what they mean for the organization

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.7` Threat intelligence

Information about security threats is to be gathered and examined so that it yields threat intelligence. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): makes the organization aware of the threats it faces so fitting mitigations can be chosen. 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 5.7.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.7. 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 intelligence updated the risk assessment or risk register · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.7, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Documented threat intelligence objectives and a process covering collection, processing, analysis and dissemination · Policy repository / GRC workspace
A list of vetted internal and external intelligence sources with the rationale for selection · Document repository
Threat intelligence outputs at strategic, tactical and operational levels, such as landscape briefings, attacker technique summaries and indicator feeds · Document 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

Feeds are subscribed to but nobody analyses what they mean for the organization
Only operational indicators are consumed and strategic or tactical intelligence is ignored
Intelligence does not reach risk management or the teams running detective controls
Sources are never evaluated for reliability or relevance

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.5.6 Contact with special interest groups · A.5.8 Information security in project management