What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.8.19 Installation of software on operational systems?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.19, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; Procedures for installing and updating operational software, including authorization, testing and rollback planning; Change and deployment records showing management authorization, successful testing and the administrator who performed the installation; Configuration control records for operational software and documentation, and an audit log of updates; Evidence that development tools and compilers are absent from production systems.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.8.19?

Users can install any software on servers or workstations

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Technological controls

`A.8.19` Installation of software on operational systems

Procedures and measures are to be put in place so that installing software on operational systems is managed securely. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): ensures the integrity of operational systems and prevents exploitation of technical vulnerabilities. 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 8.19.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.8.19. 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

moderate

to go live

Source control / CI pipeline

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

Change and deployment records showing management authorization, successful testing and the administrator who performed the installation · Source control / CI pipeline
Configuration control records for operational software and documentation, and an audit log of updates · SIEM / log platform

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Evidence that development tools and compilers are absent from production systems · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.19, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Procedures for installing and updating operational software, including authorization, testing and rollback planning · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Start with the 2 of 5 artefacts that already live in a system (Source control / CI pipeline); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Users can install any software on servers or workstations
Production systems contain compilers and development code
Unsupported software versions remain in production without a risk decision
Externally hosted dependencies are pulled at build or run time without integrity controls

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.8.18 Use of privileged utility programs · A.8.20 Networks security