ISO 27001 A.8.30: outsourced development, explained for startups
What A.8.30 asks of a small company, and what an auditor samples.
When outside parties build software for you, oversee and check their security work. Do not lose visibility just because the coding is outsourced.
Why it exists: to hold outside developers to its security standards.
A.8.30 Outsourced development
Work by outside developers meets your security standards. What proves it: security terms for outside developers, and a review of what they deliver.
A certification auditor samples contracts and reviews of outsourced work. A file that usually does the job: a development contract with security terms, and a contractor's pull request reviewed by your team.
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.8.30 walks you through it in this order.
- Put security and confidentiality terms in every development contract.
- Give outside developers only the access they need.
- Review their code like your own before release.
No question in the readiness assessment covers A.8.30 directly, so the control card is its whole evidence path.
Policies, connectors and the SOC 2 overlap
In the ISO 27001 policy pack, the Secure Development and Change Management Policy covers A.8.30. 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: CC8.1, change management and CC9.2, vendor risk.
Technological controls
A.8.30 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:
- A.8.27, secure architecture
- A.8.28, secure coding
- A.8.29, security testing
- A.8.31, separate environments
- A.8.32, change management
- A.8.33, test data
Before it: A.8.29, security testing. After it: A.8.31, separate environments. Every control, by theme, is on the Annex A controls page.
Questions
What does ISO 27001 A.8.30 require?
What evidence does an auditor want for A.8.30?
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.