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ISO 27001 · Annex A controls · 2 min read

ISO 27001 A.8.15: logging, explained for startups

What A.8.15 asks of a small company, and what an auditor samples.

Record what happens across your systems, including user actions and security events. Good logs let you investigate problems and prove what took place.

Why it exists: to keep a record of security events long enough to investigate them.

A.8.15 Logging

Systems record security events and keep the records long enough. What proves it: security logs collected from key systems, protected, and kept for a set period.

A certification auditor samples log configuration and retention. A file that usually does the job: cloud audit logging on for all regions, sent to protected storage with a one-year retention.

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.8.15 walks you through it in this order.

  1. Turn on audit logging in your cloud provider, identity provider and code host.
  2. Send logs to storage that cannot be edited.
  3. Keep security logs for at least one year.

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

  • How long do you keep production and security logs?

Policies, connectors and the SOC 2 overlap

In the ISO 27001 policy pack, the Logging and Monitoring Policy covers A.8.15. 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:

  • Amazon Web Services, CloudTrail trails: audit log configuration per region.
  • GitHub, Organization audit log: audit log entries for organization admin actions, on Team and Enterprise plans.
  • Google Cloud, Audit logs configuration: cloud Audit Logs configuration per project, covering admin read and data access log types.
  • Google Cloud, Logging sinks: log sinks per project, with their export destinations and filters.
  • Google Workspace, Login audit: login activity over the last 30 days.
  • Google Workspace, Admin audit: admin console actions over the last 30 days.
  • Okta, System log summary: counts of system log events by type over the collection window, never the message bodies.

The same evidence counts toward SOC 2. The Trust Services criterion that cover this ground: CC7.2, anomaly monitoring.

Technological controls

A.8.15 is one of the 34 technological controls in Annex A. The controls built into your systems: access, devices, malware, vulnerabilities, backups, logging, networks, encryption and secure development. Exports and settings screenshots prove most of them.

Nearby controls in the same theme:

Before it: A.8.14, redundancy. After it: A.8.16, monitoring for anomalies. Every control, by theme, is on the Annex A controls page.

Questions

What does ISO 27001 A.8.15 require?
Record what happens across your systems, including user actions and security events. Good logs let you investigate problems and prove what took place.
What evidence does an auditor want for A.8.15?
Security logs collected from key systems, protected, and kept for a set period. A certification auditor samples log configuration and retention.

Related

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.