ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.36 — Compliance with policies, rules and standards for information security

What this control requires

Compliance with the organization's information security policy, topic-specific policies, rules and standards shall be regularly reviewed.

In plain English

Compliance with the organization's information security policy, topic-specific policies, rules and standards shall be regularly reviewed. In practice, this means you can prove you policy 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.5.36) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Policy Management

Docs. Keep each policy in version-controlled Markdown alongside the code that implements it; ship a signed PDF snapshot at each annual review and link the SHA into the SoA.

Operational checklist

• Policy. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Information. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Management. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Compliance. 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.
• Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

Signed policy or standard documents the safeguard. Focus: Compliance with policies, rules and standards for information security.

Common pitfalls

• Policies that no engineer has read; the version in Confluence drifts from the version that's actually being enforced.

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.

• HIPAA (45 CFR Part 164) 164.308(a)(5)(i) — Security Awareness and Training
• ISO/IEC 27701:2025 A.3.3 — Information security policies
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) C1.2 — Confidential Information Disposal
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.12.1 — Security Assessment
• BSI C5:2020 SP-01 — Documentation, communication and provision of policies and instructions

Related controls in ISO/IEC 27001:2022

• Annex A A.5.1 — Policies for information security
• Annex A A.5.4 — Management responsibilities
• Annex A A.5.12 — Classification of information
• Annex A A.5.29 — Information security during disruption
• Annex A A.5.31 — Legal, statutory, regulatory and contractual requirements
• Annex A A.5.26 — Response to information security incidents

References

• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 — ISO/IEC 27001:2022
• Catalogue identifier: Annex A A.5.36

Topics: governance riskpolicy management