ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.7.5 — Protecting against physical and environmental threats

What this control requires

Protection against physical and environmental threats, such as natural disasters and other intentional or unintentional physical threats to infrastructure shall be designed and implemented.

In plain English

Protection against physical and environmental threats, such as natural disasters and other intentional or unintentional physical threats to infrastructure shall be designed and implemented. In practice, this means you can prove you protection natural disasters-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.7.5) 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

• Protection. 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: natural disasters, intentional, security.

Evidence to collect

• Code Repo Scan. Source-control evidence — branch protection, required reviewers, CI status, SCA / SAST reports.

Source control pipelines (GitHub, GitLab) enforce SDLC guardrails. Focus: Protecting against physical and environmental threats.

Related controls in ISO/IEC 27001:2022

• Annex A A.7.3 — Securing offices, rooms and facilities
• Annex A A.7.12 — Cabling security
• Annex A A.7.14 — Secure disposal or re-use of equipment
• Annex A A.7.1 — Physical security perimeters
• Annex A A.7.9 — Security of assets off-premises
• Annex A A.7.4 — Physical security monitoring

References

• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 — ISO/IEC 27001:2022
• Catalogue identifier: Annex A A.7.5

Topics: governance riskphysical securityenvironmental controls