ISO 27001 A.5.22: watching your suppliers, explained for startups
What A.5.22 asks of a small company, and what an auditor samples.
Keep an eye on how your suppliers are actually performing against their security commitments. Review changes to their services so new risks do not creep in unnoticed.
Why it exists: to notice and act when the service or security of a supplier changes.
A.5.22 Monitoring, review and change management of supplier services
You review your suppliers regularly and act when their service or security changes. What proves it: a dated review of your key suppliers, including their latest assurance report and any changes.
A certification auditor samples supplier review records and reviewed assurance reports. A file that usually does the job: a yearly supplier review with each provider's latest certificate or audit report and your notes.
How to put it in place
Each step leaves a record, and the record is what the auditor samples rather than the step itself. Inside Polara, the control card for A.5.22 walks you through it in this order.
- Set a yearly review for each key supplier.
- Collect its latest certificate or audit report and note anything that affects you.
- Record the date and any follow-up.
The free ISO 27001 readiness assessment asks one question that evidences it:
- How do you manage the suppliers and cloud services that handle your data?
Policies, connectors and the SOC 2 overlap
In the ISO 27001 policy pack, the Supplier and Cloud Service Security Policy covers A.5.22. An auditor reads the policy for the rule, then samples the records to see the rule was followed.
The same evidence counts toward SOC 2. The Trust Services criterion that cover this ground: CC9.2, vendor risk.
Organizational controls
A.5.22 is one of the 37 organizational controls in Annex A. How the company runs security: policies, roles, suppliers, incidents, continuity and legal duties. Most of these are written decisions and the records that show you follow them.
Nearby controls in the same theme:
- A.5.19, supplier security
- A.5.20, security in supplier contracts
- A.5.21, technology supply chain
- A.5.23, cloud services
- A.5.24, incident readiness
- A.5.25, triaging security events
Before it: A.5.21, technology supply chain. After it: A.5.23, cloud services. Every control, by theme, is on the Annex A controls page.
Questions
What does ISO 27001 A.5.22 require?
What evidence does an auditor want for A.5.22?
Get ready for ISO 27001 certification.
The readiness assessment is free, with no payment and no card. ISO 27001 is part of Constellation, at $10,800 a year: everything in Orbit plus the management system, the policies, the evidence and the management review for ISO 27001, and your SOC 2 Type 2 audit is included in every contract year. You contract the certification body directly.
The internal audit is priced separately: Polara arranges it with an independent internal auditor from our partner network who works in the platform, and quotes it for your company.
Take the free assessmentPolara Labs is not a certification body. Certification audits are performed by independent accredited certification bodies.