ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.7.2 — Physical entry

What this control requires

Secure areas shall be protected by appropriate entry controls and access points.

In plain English

Secure areas shall be protected by appropriate entry controls and access points. In practice, this means you can prove you management 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.7.2) 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

• 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.
• Physical. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Secure. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, entry, secure areas, security.

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: Physical entry.

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.

• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC6.2 — Access Provisioning
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.9.1 — Personnel Screening
• NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 PE-7 — Visitor Control
• 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.5.15 — Access control
• Annex A A.5.2 — Information security roles and responsibilities
• Annex A A.8.23 — Web filtering
• Annex A A.5.16 — Identity management
• Annex A A.5.33 — Protection of records
• Annex A A.7.6 — Working in secure areas

References

• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 — ISO/IEC 27001:2022
• Catalogue identifier: Annex A A.7.2

Topics: identity accessidentity managementaccess reviewprivileged accessphysical security