ISO 27001 · Annex A controls · 2 min read

ISO 27001 A.7.11: power and utilities, explained for startups

What A.7.11 asks of a small company, and what an auditor samples.

Protect the utilities your systems depend on, like power, cooling, and network links. Failures in these can knock out your services just as badly as a cyberattack.

Why it exists: to keep systems running, or failing safely, when power or network supply fails.

A.7.11 Supporting utilities

Office power and network keep running or fail safely. What proves it: how power and connectivity in the office are protected, and a check that it works.

A certification auditor samples utility protection records. A file that usually does the job: a battery backup test record for office network equipment, or the building's utility maintenance report.

This control applies only where you have an office or other premises. A fully remote company can exclude it in its Statement of Applicability, with the reason written down.

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.7.11 walks you through it in this order.

Put network equipment on battery backup.
Use a second internet connection if the office must stay online.
Test once a year and record it.

No question in the readiness assessment covers A.7.11 directly, so the control card is its whole evidence path.

Policies, connectors and the SOC 2 overlap

In the ISO 27001 policy pack, the Physical and Environmental Security Policy covers A.7.11. 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: A1.2, recovery infrastructure.

Physical controls

A.7.11 is one of the 14 physical controls in Annex A. Buildings, rooms, equipment and media. A remote company with no office can exclude several of these in its Statement of Applicability, with the reason written down, and covers the rest through laptop rules and its cloud provider.

Nearby controls in the same theme:

Before it: A.7.10, storage media. After it: A.7.12, cabling. Every control, by theme, is on the Annex A controls page.

Questions

What does ISO 27001 A.7.11 require?

Protect the utilities your systems depend on, like power, cooling, and network links. Failures in these can knock out your services just as badly as a cyberattack.

What evidence does an auditor want for A.7.11?

How power and connectivity in the office are protected, and a check that it works. A certification auditor samples utility protection records.

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 assessment

Polara Labs is not a certification body. Certification audits are performed by independent accredited certification bodies.