What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 5.7 Threat intelligence?

Documented threat intelligence objectives and a process covering collection, processing, analysis and dissemination; A list of vetted internal and external intelligence sources with the rationale for selection; Threat intelligence outputs at strategic, tactical and operational levels, such as landscape briefings, attacker technique summaries and indicator feeds; Evidence that intelligence updated the risk assessment or risk register; Evidence that indicators were loaded into firewalls, intrusion detection, SIEM or anti-malware tooling and used in security test planning; Records of reciprocal sharing with peer organizations or sharing communities.

What is the most common gap auditors find on 5.7?

Feeds are subscribed to but nobody analyses what they mean for the organization

ISO/IEC 27002:2022 · Organizational controls

`5.7` Threat intelligence

Information about security threats is to be gathered and examined so that it yields threat intelligence. Purpose: make the organization aware of the threats around it so that fitting mitigations can be chosen. Guidance: knowledge of current and emerging threats is analysed so the organization can act to stop them doing harm and lessen their effect. All three layers should be considered: strategic (the broad picture of how the threat landscape is shifting, such as kinds of attacker or attack), tactical (how attackers operate, their tools and technologies) and operational (detail of particular attacks, including technical indicators). Good intelligence is relevant to protecting the organization, gives accurate and detailed insight, carries context (timing, location, past experience, how common it is among similar organizations) and can be acted on quickly. The activities are: set objectives for producing intelligence; identify, vet and choose internal and external sources; collect from them; process the material for analysis (translating, formatting, corroborating); analyse what it means for the organization; and pass it in understandable form to the people who need it. The results feed information security risk management, serve as extra input to technical preventive and detective tools such as firewalls, intrusion detection and anti-malware, and inform security testing. Intelligence should be shared with other organizations on a reciprocal basis. Other information: most organizations consume intelligence from independent providers, government agencies or collaborative groups rather than producing it, and controls 5.25, 8.7, 8.16 and 8.23 depend on its quality.

Source: ISO/IEC 27002:2022, 5.7. 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

Document repository

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

Evidence that intelligence updated the risk assessment or risk register · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Evidence that indicators were loaded into firewalls, intrusion detection, SIEM or anti-malware tooling and used in security test planning · Endpoint management (MDM / EDR)
Records of reciprocal sharing with peer organizations or sharing communities · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Documented threat intelligence objectives and a process covering collection, processing, analysis and dissemination · Policy repository / GRC workspace
A list of vetted internal and external intelligence sources with the rationale for selection · Document repository
Threat intelligence outputs at strategic, tactical and operational levels, such as landscape briefings, attacker technique summaries and indicator feeds · Document repository

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

Feeds are subscribed to but nobody analyses what they mean for the organization
Only operational indicators are consumed and strategic or tactical intelligence is ignored
Intelligence does not reach risk management or the teams running detective controls
Sources are never evaluated for reliability or relevance

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

5.6 Contact with special interest groups · 5.8 Information security in project management