A.8.31·high·Component: Technological controlsWhat this control requires
Development, testing and production environments shall be separated and secured.
In plain English
Development, testing and production environments shall be separated and secured. 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.
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 Technological controls, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Annex A A.8.31) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.
How to implement
Code Review Testing
Pipeline. Require at least one human reviewer plus passing CI (lint, type, unit, security scan) before merge — protected branches enforce this.
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.
Secure Development
Pipeline. Require code review, SAST (Semgrep / Snyk Code), SCA (Dependabot / Renovate), secret-scanning and IaC scanning in the merge pipeline.
Branch protection. Protected branches enforce reviews, signed commits and passing CI before merge; document the protection rules as the control evidence.
Operational checklist
- Policy. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
- Management. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
- Secure. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
- Separation. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
- Test. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
- Scope: management, development.
Evidence to collect
- Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.
- Ticketing Workflow.
ticketing_workflowevidence
Infrastructure segmentation reports and release approvals keep development, test and production separated.
Common pitfalls
- Policies that no engineer has read; the version in Confluence drifts from the version that's actually being enforced.
- CI security checks set to warn-only; the merge button is faster than the security feedback.
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.
- BSI C5:2020 DEV-01 — Policies for the development/procurement of information systems
- SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC1.2 — Board Independence and Oversight
- NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.13.2 — Recategorized as NCO
- NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 SA-8(29) — Repeatable And Documented Procedures
- HIPAA (45 CFR Part 164) 164.308(a)(5)(i) — Security Awareness and Training
Related controls in ISO/IEC 27001:2022
- Annex A A.8.27 — Secure system architecture and engineering principles
- Annex A A.8.29 — Security testing in development and acceptance
- Annex A A.8.33 — Test information
- Annex A A.8.25 — Secure development life cycle
- Annex A A.8.11 — Data masking
- Annex A A.8.6 — Capacity management
References
- ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 — ISO/IEC 27001:2022
- Catalogue identifier:
Annex A A.8.31
Topics: governance riskcode review testingpolicy managementsecure development