ISO 27001 A.7.8: placing equipment safely, explained for startups
What A.7.8 asks of a small company, and what an auditor samples.
Place and protect equipment so it is shielded from damage, tampering, and environmental harm. Where hardware sits affects how safe it is.
Why it exists: to keep office equipment from being damaged, stolen or overlooked.
A.7.8 Equipment siting and protection
Office equipment is placed and protected so it is hard to damage, steal or overlook. What proves it: how office equipment is placed and protected from damage, theft and people reading screens.
A certification auditor samples equipment placement and protection. A file that usually does the job: a walkthrough checklist covering screens facing away from windows and network equipment in a locked cabinet.
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.7.8 walks you through it in this order.
- Keep network equipment and servers in a locked cabinet or room.
- Place screens so visitors cannot read them.
- Check during your yearly office walkthrough.
No question in the readiness assessment covers A.7.8 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.7.8. 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 criteria that cover this ground: CC6.4, physical access and A1.2, recovery infrastructure.
Physical controls
A.7.8 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.7.5, environmental threats
- A.7.6, working in secure areas
- A.7.7, clear desk and screen
- A.7.9, devices off site
- A.7.10, storage media
- A.7.11, power and utilities
Before it: A.7.7, clear desk and screen. After it: A.7.9, devices off site. Every control, by theme, is on the Annex A controls page.
Questions
What does ISO 27001 A.7.8 require?
What evidence does an auditor want for A.7.8?
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.