ISO 27001 A.5.26: responding to incidents, explained for startups

A.5.26 Response to information security incidents

Incidents are handled following the plan. What proves it: records showing incidents were handled following your plan, or a dated statement that none occurred.

A certification auditor samples incident tickets showing the response. A file that usually does the job: an incident ticket with its timeline, actions and closure, or a signed note that no incidents occurred in the period.

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.5.26 walks you through it in this order.

1. Follow the incident plan for every incident and record each step in a ticket.
2. Close each incident with a summary.
3. If there were none, record that with a date.

The free ISO 27001 readiness assessment asks one question that evidences it:

• Do you have an incident response procedure and a log of incidents?

Policies, connectors and the SOC 2 overlap

In the ISO 27001 policy pack, the Information Security Incident Management Policy covers A.5.26. 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: CC7.4, incident response.

Organizational controls

A.5.26 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.5.23, cloud services
• A.5.24, incident readiness
• A.5.25, triaging security events
• A.5.27, learning from incidents
• A.5.28, collecting evidence
• A.5.29, security during a disruption

Before it: A.5.25, triaging security events. After it: A.5.27, learning from incidents. Every control, by theme, is on the Annex A controls page.