A.8.6·medium·Component: Technological controlsWhat this control requires
The use of resources shall be monitored and adjusted in line with current and expected capacity requirements.
In plain English
The use of resources shall be monitored and adjusted in line with current and expected capacity 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 Technological controls, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Annex A A.8.6) 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.
- Management. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
- Capacity. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
- Scope: management.
Evidence to collect
- Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.
Infrastructure monitoring (CloudWatch, Azure Monitor) reports capacity trends and scaling events.
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.
- SOC 2 (2017 TSC) A1.1 — Monitoring and Managing System Capacity
- HIPAA (45 CFR Part 164) 164.308(a)(5)(i) — Security Awareness and Training
- GDPR Article 55 — Competence
- NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.13.15 — Session Authenticity
- BSI C5:2020 SP-01 — Documentation, communication and provision of policies and instructions
Related controls in ISO/IEC 27001:2022
- Annex A A.8.11 — Data masking
- Annex A A.8.14 — Redundancy of information processing facilities
- Annex A A.8.19 — Installation of software on operational systems
- Annex A A.8.8 — Management of technical vulnerabilities
- Annex A A.8.15 — Logging
- Annex A A.8.17 — Clock synchronization
References
- ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 — ISO/IEC 27001:2022
- Catalogue identifier:
Annex A A.8.6
Topics: governance riskcapacity managementpolicy management