ISO 27001 A.7.3: securing offices and rooms, explained for startups
What A.7.3 asks of a small company, and what an auditor samples.
Design and secure your offices and equipment rooms so sensitive assets are hard to reach. Physical layout should support, not undermine, your security.
Why it exists: to protect the rooms and facilities that hold its information.
A.7.3 Securing offices, rooms and facilities
Offices and rooms that hold company information are protected. What proves it: how rooms that hold company information are secured, and a recent check that it works.
A certification auditor samples office access controls and a walkthrough record. A file that usually does the job: a walkthrough checklist with the date, or a floor plan marking restricted rooms and how they lock.
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.7.3 walks you through it in this order.
- List the rooms that hold equipment or paper records.
- Make sure each locks and only the right people have keys or badges.
- Walk through once and record the date and anything you fixed.
No question in the readiness assessment covers A.7.3 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.7.3. 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: CC6.4, physical access.
Physical controls
A.7.3 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:
- A.7.1, physical perimeters
- A.7.2, getting into the building
- A.7.4, physical monitoring
- A.7.5, environmental threats
- A.7.6, working in secure areas
Before it: A.7.2, getting into the building. After it: A.7.4, physical monitoring. Every control, by theme, is on the Annex A controls page.
Questions
What does ISO 27001 A.7.3 require?
What evidence does an auditor want for A.7.3?
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.
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