ISO/IEC 42001:2023 A.10.3 — Suppliers

What this control requires

Supplier relationships involving AI systems shall include risk-based controls, contractual requirements, and ongoing oversight.

In plain English

Supplier relationships involving AI systems shall include risk-based controls, contractual requirements, and ongoing oversight. In practice, this means you can prove you manage ai systems-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

ISO 42001 is the first audited evidence regulators, customers and investors can ask for that you are managing AI risk. Each Annex A control is a check-box in that audit; it is also the management system enterprises are starting to require from AI vendors before an MSA can be signed.

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 42001 auditor verifies you have an AI policy, a risk-based system of impact assessments for each AI system, lifecycle controls from data acquisition through retirement, and third-party-AI controls that pierce the vendor's wrapper to underlying model behaviour.

Within Organizational controls, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Annex A A.10.3) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

1. Write a short policy stating intent, scope and named owner.
2. Encode it as a platform guardrail — SCP, Azure Policy initiative, Organisation Policy, or repository policy.
3. Wire a monitoring signal that catches drift (CSPM rule, SIEM rule, scheduled query, Workspace alert) and ticket it.
4. Review on a documented cadence and capture the review in the risk register or compliance tracker.

Operational checklist

• Manage. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Monitor. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: ai systems, suppliers, risk.

Evidence to collect

• Vendor Risk Management. vendor_risk_management evidence
• Policy Document. A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.

Vendor risk evidence and policies should demonstrate that supplier relationships involving AI systems include due diligence, contractual requirements, and ongoing oversight. Focus: Suppliers.

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) CC9.2 — Vendor Risk Management
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.19 — Information security in supplier relationships
• NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 SA-12 — Supply Chain Protection
• GDPR Article 76 — Confidentiality
• ISO/IEC 27701:2025 A.3.10 — Supplier agreements

Related controls in ISO/IEC 42001:2023

• Annex A A.10.2 — Allocation of responsibilities
• Annex A A.10.4 — Customers
• Annex A A.5.2 — Process for impact assessment
• Annex A A.5.5 — Assessment of societal impact

References

• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 42 — ISO/IEC 42001:2023
• Catalogue identifier: Annex A A.10.3

Topics: vendor riskthird party riskgovernance riskvendor managementthird party monitoringsupply chain security