What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.7.5 Protecting against physical and environmental threats?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.7.5, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; Physical and environmental risk assessments performed before critical operations began at each site and repeated periodically; Specialist advice or reports on fire, flood, seismic, explosion and civil unrest risks; Site selection records considering elevation, water, fault lines and urban threat profile; Fire detection and suppression system design, inspection and test records, with the suppressant chosen for the environment.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.7.5?

No environmental risk assessment was made before a data room was built

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Physical controls

`A.7.5` Protecting against physical and environmental threats

The organization is to design and implement protection for its infrastructure against natural disasters and other physical or environmental hazards, whether deliberate or accidental. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): prevents or reduces the consequences of events arising from physical and environmental threats. 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 7.5.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.7.5. 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

Physical access / facilities

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

Specialist advice or reports on fire, flood, seismic, explosion and civil unrest risks · Physical access / facilities
Site selection records considering elevation, water, fault lines and urban threat profile · Physical access / facilities
Fire detection and suppression system design, inspection and test records, with the suppressant chosen for the environment · Physical access / facilities

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.7.5, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Physical and environmental risk assessments performed before critical operations began at each site and repeated periodically · 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

No environmental risk assessment was made before a data room was built
Water suppression is used where it would destroy equipment and media
Flood detection is absent beneath raised floors
Threat changes such as new flood mapping are not monitored

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.7.4 Physical security monitoring · A.7.6 Working in secure areas