What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.8.27 Secure system architecture and engineering principles?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.27, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; Documented security engineering and architecture principles covering all architecture layers, with review history; Security design review records for new systems and major changes, including analysis against known attack patterns; Architecture documentation showing integration with security infrastructure such as PKI, IAM and DLP; Formal acceptance records, with rationale, for controls that fall short of requirements.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.8.27?

Principles are documented but design reviews never check against them

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Technological controls

`A.8.27` Secure system architecture and engineering principles

Principles for engineering secure systems are to be set, written down, kept current and applied to every information system development activity. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): ensures that information systems are designed, implemented and operated securely at every stage of their development. 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 8.27.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.8.27. 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

Security design review records for new systems and major changes, including analysis against known attack patterns · Document repository
Formal acceptance records, with rationale, for controls that fall short of requirements · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.27, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Documented security engineering and architecture principles covering all architecture layers, with review history · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Architecture documentation showing integration with security infrastructure such as PKI, IAM and DLP · 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

Principles are documented but design reviews never check against them
New technologies are adopted without security risk analysis
Internal network location is treated as sufficient trust for access
Shortfalls against requirements are accepted informally with no record

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.8.26 Application security requirements · A.8.28 Secure coding