ISO/IEC 42001:2023·Annex A A.7.5·high·Component: Technological controls

What this control requires

Traceability of data origins and transformations shall be retained for AI datasets to support governance, audits, and investigations.
— ISO/IEC 42001:2023, Annex A A.7.5

In plain English

Traceability of data origins and transformations shall be retained for AI datasets to support governance, audits, and investigations. In practice, this means you can prove you govern data-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 Technological 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

  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

  • Govern. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
  • Scope: data, governance.

Evidence to collect

  • Policy Document. A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.
  • Code Repo Scan. Source-control evidence — branch protection, required reviewers, CI status, SCA / SAST reports.

Policies and repository evidence should demonstrate that the origins and transformations of AI datasets remain traceable for governance, audit, and investigation purposes. Focus: Data provenance.

Related controls in ISO/IEC 42001:2023

References

Topics: data governancedata provenancetraceabilitydata lifecycle managementaudit evidence