ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.7.10 — Storage media

What this control requires

Storage media shall be managed through their life cycle of acquisition, use, transportation and disposal in accordance with the organization's classification scheme and handling requirements.

In plain English

Storage media shall be managed through their life cycle of acquisition, use, transportation and disposal in accordance with the organization's classification scheme and handling requirements. In practice, this means you can prove you policy management-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.

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 Physical controls, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Annex A A.7.10) 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.

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.
• Management. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Classification. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Physical. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Security. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, media, security.

Evidence to collect

• Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

Infrastructure posture tooling (AWS Config, Azure Policy, Nessus) verifies platform hardening. Focus: Storage media.

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) 164.310(d)(1) — Device and Media Controls
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.8.4 — Media Marking
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC6.7 — Transmission Controls
• BSI C5:2020 SP-01 — Documentation, communication and provision of policies and instructions
• NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 MP-6(6) — Media Destruction

Related controls in ISO/IEC 27001:2022

• Annex A A.7.14 — Secure disposal or re-use of equipment
• Annex A A.7.3 — Securing offices, rooms and facilities
• Annex A A.7.7 — Clear desk and clear screen
• Annex A A.7.8 — Equipment siting and protection
• Annex A A.7.1 — Physical security perimeters
• Annex A A.7.9 — Security of assets off-premises

References

• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 — ISO/IEC 27001:2022
• Catalogue identifier: Annex A A.7.10

Topics: network securityphysical securitypolicy management