ISO/IEC 27001:2022·Annex A A.8.9·medium·Component: Technological controls

What this control requires

Configurations, including security configurations, of hardware, software, services and networks shall be established, documented, implemented, monitored and reviewed.
— ISO/IEC 27001:2022, Annex A A.8.9

In plain English

Configurations, including security configurations, of hardware, software, services and networks shall be established, documented, implemented, monitored and reviewed. 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.8.9) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Configuration Management

Policy-as-code. Codify the control as Service Control Policies (AWS), Azure Policy initiatives, or Organisation Policy (GCP) so the platform enforces what the document promises.

IaC. Gate Terraform / Pulumi / CloudFormation changes with Checkov / tfsec / OPA so misconfigurations never reach production.

Drift. Run a CSPM (Wiz / Prisma / Defender for Cloud / Security Command Center) over every account and route findings to a single risk register.

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.
  • Security. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
  • Networks. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
  • Scope: management, security, security configurations, hardware, software, services, networks.

Evidence to collect

  • Code Repo Scan. Source-control evidence — branch protection, required reviewers, CI status, SCA / SAST reports.
  • Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

Infrastructure compliance scanners (AWS Config, Azure Policy) and IaC checks enforce approved configurations.

Common pitfalls

  • Manual cloud-console changes that never make it back to Terraform — drift accumulates until the next outage forces a reconciliation.
  • 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.

Related controls in ISO/IEC 27001:2022

References

Topics: governance riskconfiguration managementpolicy management