5.20 Addressing information security within supplier agreements
The information security requirements that matter for each supplier are to be set and agreed with that supplier, depending on the type of relationship. Purpose: make the agreed security level in each supplier relationship enforceable. Guidance: documented agreements should leave both parties clear about their security obligations. Terms to consider include: what information the supplier will receive or reach and by what means; its classification under the organization's scheme (5.10, 5.12, 5.13) and how that maps to the supplier's scheme; legal, regulatory and contractual obligations such as data protection, PII handling, intellectual property and copyright, and how compliance will be ensured; each party's duty to operate agreed controls (access control, performance review, monitoring, reporting, auditing) and the supplier's duty to meet the organization's requirements; acceptable and unacceptable use; how supplier staff are authorized and de-authorized, for instance an explicit list of named people; requirements for the supplier's ICT infrastructure with minimum requirements per information and access type; indemnities and remedies for failure; incident procedures, especially notification and joint remediation; training and awareness for specific procedures; subcontracting provisions such as flowing down obligations, a list of sub-suppliers and notice before changes; contacts including a security contact; lawful screening of supplier staff with responsibilities and what happens if screening is incomplete or raises concern; third-party attestations and independent reports on control effectiveness; a right to audit; periodic control effectiveness reports with timely correction of issues; defect and dispute resolution; backups matching the organization's needs for frequency, type and location; an alternate recovery site not exposed to the same threats, plus fallback controls; change management with advance notice and the option to refuse changes; physical security matching classification; protection in physical and logical transfer; termination terms on records, asset return, secure disposal and continuing confidentiality; secure destruction of the organization's information once no longer needed; and handover support at contract end to a new supplier or back in-house. A register of contracts, memoranda and information-sharing arrangements with outside parties (contracts, memoranda, information-sharing agreements) tracks where information goes, and agreements are regularly reviewed, validated and updated. Other information: agreements vary widely by organization and supplier type; ISO/IEC 27036 covers supplier agreements and ISO/IEC 19086 cloud service agreements.
Source: ISO/IEC 27002:2022, 5.20. 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 27002:2022 in the compliance library.
ISO/IEC 27002 is guidance on the Annex A controls; certification is against ISO/IEC 27001. Use this set when your sheet follows the 27002 numbering.
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
- Supplier-provided attestations or independent control effectiveness reports and records of issues raised and corrected · Vendor register / contract repository
- Contract clauses and evidence covering secure destruction of information and handover support at contract end · Vendor register / contract repository
governing documentDocuments that govern the control
- Supplier agreements containing security clauses proportionate to the relationship, such as classification mapping, agreed controls, incident notification, subcontracting, right to audit and termination terms · HR system / LMS
- A register of contracts, memoranda and information-sharing arrangements with outside parties showing what information each covers and when it was last reviewed · Vendor register / contract repository
- Minimum security requirement templates per information type and access type used as the basis for individual contracts · Vendor register / contract repository
- Lists of supplier personnel authorized to use organizational information and assets · Vendor register / contract repository
First move
Common gaps auditors find
- Standard procurement terms are used with no security schedule for high-risk suppliers
- The right to audit or to receive assurance reports is missing from critical contracts
- No register of agreements exists, so the organization cannot say which parties hold its information
- Subcontracting clauses do not flow security obligations down to sub-suppliers
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 sheet5.19 Information security in supplier relationships · 5.21 Managing information security in the ICT supply chain