ISO 27001 A.8.31: separate environments, explained for startups

A.8.31 Separation of development, test and production environments

Development, test and production run separately. What proves it: separate environments for development, test and production, with limited access to production.

A certification auditor samples environment separation and production access. A file that usually does the job: separate cloud accounts per environment and the list of people with production access.

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.8.31 walks you through it in this order.

1. Run production in its own account or project.
2. Limit production access to a few named engineers.
3. Review the production access list every quarter.

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

• What data do your test environments use?

Policies, connectors and the SOC 2 overlap

In the ISO 27001 policy pack, the Secure Development and Change Management Policy covers A.8.31. 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: CC6.1, logical access and CC8.1, change management.

Technological controls

A.8.31 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.8.28, secure coding
• A.8.29, security testing
• A.8.30, outsourced development
• A.8.32, change management
• A.8.33, test data
• A.8.34, audits on live systems

Before it: A.8.30, outsourced development. After it: A.8.32, change management. Every control, by theme, is on the Annex A controls page.