What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 5.31 Legal, statutory, regulatory and contractual requirements?

A register of applicable laws, regulations and contractual obligations for information security, with the countries covered, the approach to meeting each and a named responsible owner; Records of periodic review of the register and of new or changed legislation identified; Evidence that the register informed policies, control design, classification, risk assessment and supplier requirements; An assessment of cryptography import, export, usage and lawful access rules for each relevant jurisdiction, with legal advice where encryption crosses borders; Client, supplier and insurance contracts with their security obligations extracted and tracked; Documented processes and individual responsibilities for meeting each requirement.

What is the most common gap auditors find on 5.31?

The register lists laws but not how the organization meets each one or who is responsible

ISO/IEC 27002:2022 · Organizational controls

`5.31` Legal, statutory, regulatory and contractual requirements

The organization is to identify, record and keep current the requirements (legal, statutory, regulatory and contractual) bearing on information security, together with how it intends to meet them. Purpose: comply with the legal, regulatory and contractual obligations that concern information security. Guidance: external requirements are to be considered when writing security policies and procedures, when designing, implementing or changing controls, when classifying information and assets to set internal or supplier requirements, in risk assessment and treatment, in defining security processes, roles and responsibilities, and in setting contractual requirements for suppliers and the scope of what they supply. On legislation and regulation, the organization should identify all laws and regulations relevant to its security for its type of business; account for every relevant country where it operates, where products and services it uses come from, or where information crosses borders; review the list regularly to catch changes and new laws; and define and record the processes and individual responsibilities for meeting them. Cryptography often carries specific legal rules, so consider restrictions on importing or exporting hardware and software that perform, or are designed to have added, cryptographic functions; restrictions on using cryptography; mandatory or discretionary access by national authorities to encrypted information; and whether digital signatures, seals and certificates are legally valid; legal advice is recommended, especially when encrypted information or tools move across borders. Contractual security requirements include those in client contracts, supplier contracts (5.20) and insurance contracts.

Source: ISO/IEC 27002:2022, 5.31. 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 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.

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

Records of periodic review of the register and of new or changed legislation identified · Regulator portal / correspondence
Evidence that the register informed policies, control design, classification, risk assessment and supplier requirements · Regulator portal / correspondence
An assessment of cryptography import, export, usage and lawful access rules for each relevant jurisdiction, with legal advice where encryption crosses borders · Regulator portal / correspondence

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

A register of applicable laws, regulations and contractual obligations for information security, with the countries covered, the approach to meeting each and a named responsible owner · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Client, supplier and insurance contracts with their security obligations extracted and tracked · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Documented processes and individual responsibilities for meeting each requirement · 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

The register lists laws but not how the organization meets each one or who is responsible
Obligations in client contracts and insurance policies are not captured
Foreign jurisdictions reached through cloud hosting or data transfer are overlooked
Cryptography export or usage restrictions are not considered when deploying encryption internationally

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

5.30 ICT readiness for business continuity · 5.32 Intellectual property rights