A.8.16 Monitoring activities
Networks, systems and applications are to be monitored for anomalous behaviour, with appropriate steps taken to evaluate possible information security incidents. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): spots abnormal behaviour and possible security incidents. 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 8.16.
Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.8.16. 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.
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
- Baselines of normal behaviour for systems and user groups, and the detection rules built on them · Cloud console / configuration management
- Alerting configuration with thresholds and evidence of tuning to reduce false positives · SIEM / log platform
periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review
none for this control
governing documentDocuments that govern the control
- Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.16, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- A documented monitoring scope covering network traffic, system access, configuration files, security tool logs, code integrity and resource use, with retention periods · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- Monitoring team rota or SOC arrangement with trained staff and redundant alert channels · Policy repository / GRC workspace
First move
Common gaps auditors find
- Monitoring tools are deployed but no baseline was set, so anomalies are not recognized
- Alerts go to an unmonitored mailbox outside business hours
- Outbound traffic to known malicious domains is not monitored
- Alert fatigue from untuned rules causes real incidents to be missed
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.
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