ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.15 — Access control

What this control requires

Rules to control physical and logical access to information and other associated assets shall be established and implemented based on business and information security requirements.

In plain English

Rules to control physical and logical access to information and other associated assets shall be established and implemented based on business and information security requirements. In practice, this means you can prove you information information security-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

ISO 27001 certification depends on showing each Annex A control is either implemented or explicitly justified for exclusion in the Statement of Applicability (SoA). Certification bodies sample controls during surveillance audits, and a missing SoA entry — or implementation that doesn't match the SoA wording — is a finding.

This control is rated high. Auditors expect a named owner, a remediation SLA, and a tooling artefact that evidences continuous operation.

What an auditor looks for

An ISO 27001 lead auditor looks for: (1) an SoA entry covering the control with justification, (2) a documented procedure or policy implementing it, (3) records that prove the procedure runs (logs, tickets, training records) and (4) management-review evidence that effectiveness is monitored.

Within Organizational controls, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Annex A A.5.15) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Physical Security

Inheritance. For cloud-only operations, inherit physical controls from the provider's SOC 2 / ISO 27001 report and document the inheritance in the SoA.

Operational checklist

• Information. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Management. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Access Control. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Identity. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Physical. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: information security, assets, management, security requirements.

Evidence to collect

• Identity Scan. IAM / IdP exports — Entra ID, Okta, IAM Identity Center, Workspace directory — showing accounts, roles, MFA state and last sign-in.

Identity analytics (Okta, SailPoint, Access Analyzer) demonstrates least-privilege. Focus: Access control.

How it maps to other frameworks

Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.

• NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 PS-6(3) — Post-Employment Requirements
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC6.2 — Access Provisioning
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.9.1 — Personnel Screening
• BSI C5:2020 PS-04 — Physical site access control
• CIS Controls v8 9.2 — Use DNS Filtering Services

Related controls in ISO/IEC 27001:2022

• Annex A A.5.2 — Information security roles and responsibilities
• Annex A A.5.18 — Access rights
• Annex A A.5.16 — Identity management
• Annex A A.5.33 — Protection of records
• Annex A A.7.2 — Physical entry
• Annex A A.6.1 — Screening

References

• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 — ISO/IEC 27001:2022
• Catalogue identifier: Annex A A.5.15

Topics: identity accessidentity managementaccess reviewprivileged accessphysical security