ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.2 — Information security roles and responsibilities

What this control requires

Information security roles and responsibilities shall be defined and allocated according to the organization needs.

In plain English

Information security roles and responsibilities shall be defined and allocated according to the organization needs. 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.5.2) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

1. Write a short policy stating intent, scope and named owner.
2. Encode it as a platform guardrail — SCP, Azure Policy initiative, Organisation Policy, or repository policy.
3. Wire a monitoring signal that catches drift (CSPM rule, SIEM rule, scheduled query, Workspace alert) and ticket it.
4. Review on a documented cadence and capture the review in the risk register or compliance tracker.

Operational checklist

• Information. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Management. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Identity. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Access. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Security. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: information security, management.

Evidence to collect

• Policy Document. A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.
• Identity Scan. IAM / IdP exports — Entra ID, Okta, IAM Identity Center, Workspace directory — showing accounts, roles, MFA state and last sign-in.
• Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

Identity analytics (Okta, SailPoint, Access Analyzer) demonstrates least-privilege. Focus: Information security roles and responsibilities.

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 800-171 Rev. 3 3.9.1 — Personnel Screening
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC1.5 — Accountability for Internal Control Responsibilities
• NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 PS-6(3) — Post-Employment Requirements
• CIS Controls v8 9.2 — Use DNS Filtering Services
• GDPR Article 12 — Transparent information, communication and modalities for the exercise of the rights of the data subject

Related controls in ISO/IEC 27001:2022

• Annex A A.5.15 — Access control
• Annex A A.5.16 — Identity management
• Annex A A.5.33 — Protection of records
• Annex A A.6.1 — Screening
• Annex A A.5.18 — Access rights
• Annex A A.8.23 — Web filtering

References

• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 — ISO/IEC 27001:2022
• Catalogue identifier: Annex A A.5.2

Topics: identity accessidentity managementaccess reviewprivileged access