ISO 27001 A.6.5: duties after leaving, explained for startups
What A.6.5 asks of a small company, and what an auditor samples.
Make clear which security duties survive after someone leaves or switches roles, such as confidentiality. Communicate and enforce those lasting obligations.
Why it exists: to end access on the day a person leaves and keep their confidentiality duties in force.
A.6.5 Responsibilities after termination or change of employment
Leavers lose access on their last day and know their duties continue. What proves it: access removed on the last day, with a completed record for a recent leaver or role change.
A certification auditor samples leaver tickets with access removal. A file that usually does the job: an offboarding ticket with timestamps, or identity provider logs showing the account disabled on the last day.
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.6.5 walks you through it in this order.
- Write an offboarding checklist covering the identity provider, cloud accounts, code hosting, devices and shared secrets.
- Run it on the last day and remind leavers that their confidentiality duties continue.
- Keep the completed checklist.
The free ISO 27001 readiness assessment asks one question that evidences it:
- When someone leaves, how quickly is their access removed?
Policies, connectors and the SOC 2 overlap
In the ISO 27001 policy pack, the People and Human Resources Security Policy covers A.6.5. An auditor reads the policy for the rule, then samples the records to see the rule was followed.
Connected systems that pull evidence for it:
- Okta, Deprovisioned users: users deprovisioned in the collection window, with the date their status changed.
The same evidence counts toward SOC 2. The Trust Services criterion that cover this ground: CC6.2, user provisioning.
People controls
A.6.5 is one of the 8 people controls in Annex A. What happens before, during and after someone works for you: screening, terms, training, discipline, remote work and reporting. Small teams meet these with a handful of signed records.
Nearby controls in the same theme:
- A.6.2, employment terms
- A.6.3, security training
- A.6.4, disciplinary process
- A.6.6, confidentiality agreements
- A.6.7, remote work
- A.6.8, reporting security events
Before it: A.6.4, disciplinary process. After it: A.6.6, confidentiality agreements. Every control, by theme, is on the Annex A controls page.
Questions
What does ISO 27001 A.6.5 require?
What evidence does an auditor want for A.6.5?
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.