ISO 27001 A.8.32: change management, explained for startups
What A.8.32 asks of a small company, and what an auditor samples.
Review, approve, and track changes to systems so they do not break security or availability. A managed process keeps surprises out of production.
Why it exists: to approve, test and trace every change to production.
A.8.32 Change management
Changes to production are approved, tested and traceable. What proves it: production changes approved, tested and traceable from request to deployment.
A certification auditor samples change and deploy samples. A file that usually does the job: a merged pull request showing review, passing tests and the deployment it triggered.
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.8.32 walks you through it in this order.
- Deploy only from reviewed, merged pull requests through your pipeline.
- Keep emergency changes rare and review them afterward.
- Keep the change history.
The free ISO 27001 readiness assessment asks one question that evidences it:
- How do code changes reach production?
Policies, connectors and the SOC 2 overlap
In the ISO 27001 policy pack, the Secure Development and Change Management Policy covers A.8.32. 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:
- GitHub, Branch protection: default-branch protection rules, including required reviews and status checks.
- GitHub, CODEOWNERS: whether a CODEOWNERS file assigns review ownership per path.
- Linear, Completed issues: issues completed in the collection window, with their assignee and state changes.
- Jira, Resolved issues: issues resolved in the collection window, with their assignee and reporter.
- Jira, Projects: the projects on the Jira site.
The same evidence counts toward SOC 2. The Trust Services criterion that cover this ground: CC8.1, change management.
Technological controls
A.8.32 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.8.29, security testing
- A.8.30, outsourced development
- A.8.31, separate environments
- A.8.33, test data
- A.8.34, audits on live systems
Before it: A.8.31, separate environments. After it: A.8.33, test data. Every control, by theme, is on the Annex A controls page.
Questions
What does ISO 27001 A.8.32 require?
What evidence does an auditor want for A.8.32?
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.