What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.8 Information security in project management?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.8, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; The project management methodology showing mandatory security steps at initiation and at defined stage gates; Project risk registers containing information security risks assessed early and revisited during the project; Documented security requirements for the deliverable, derived from policy, regulation, threat modelling and classification of the information involved; Stage-gate or steering committee minutes recording review of the security work.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.8?

Security is only considered for ICT development projects, not facilities or business process projects

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.8` Information security in project management

Information security is to be built into the way projects are managed. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): ensures security risks of projects and their deliverables are addressed throughout the project life cycle. 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 5.8.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.8. 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

Stage-gate or steering committee minutes recording review of the security work · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.8, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
The project management methodology showing mandatory security steps at initiation and at defined stage gates · Document repository
Project risk registers containing information security risks assessed early and revisited during the project · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Documented security requirements for the deliverable, derived from policy, regulation, threat modelling and classification of the information involved · 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

Security is only considered for ICT development projects, not facilities or business process projects
Security requirements are added late, after design decisions are fixed
Risks from running the project itself, such as insecure sharing with external partners, are ignored
No stage gate checks whether security treatments actually work

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.5.7 Threat intelligence · A.5.9 Inventory of information and other associated assets