A.8.31 Separation of development, test and production environments
Development, test and production environments are to be kept apart and secured. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): keeps development and testing work from harming production systems and data. 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 8.31.
Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.8.31. 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
none for this control
periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review
- Documented promotion rules and authorization records for moving software into production · Document repository
- Evidence that development tools are absent from production and environment labels are displayed · Cloud console / configuration management
governing documentDocuments that govern the control
- Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.31, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- Architecture showing development, test and production in separate domains, accounts or subscriptions · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- Access rights showing that no individual can change both development and production without review, or monitoring that detects it · Policy repository / GRC workspace
First move
Common gaps auditors find
- Developers hold standing administrative access to production
- Test environments contain unmasked copies of production data with weak access controls
- Development and test tools are unpatched because they are seen as low risk
- Production and test consoles look identical, leading to changes in the wrong environment
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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