ISO 27001 A.8.6: capacity, explained for startups

A.8.6 Capacity management

You watch system capacity and act before it runs out. What proves it: capacity monitoring with alerts, and the scaling or planning that responds to it.

A certification auditor samples capacity alerts and scaling settings. A file that usually does the job: cloud monitoring alerts on processor, memory and storage use, with autoscaling settings.

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.8.6 walks you through it in this order.

1. Set alerts on processor, memory, storage and database limits.
2. Turn on autoscaling where the service supports it.
3. Review capacity every quarter and before big launches.

No question in the readiness assessment covers A.8.6 directly, so the control card is its whole evidence path.

Policies, connectors and the SOC 2 overlap

In the ISO 27001 policy pack, the Operations Security Policy covers A.8.6. 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 criterion that cover this ground: A1.1, capacity planning.

Technological controls

A.8.6 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.8.3, restricting access to data
• A.8.4, source code access
• A.8.5, secure sign in
• A.8.7, malware protection
• A.8.8, vulnerability management
• A.8.9, configuration management

Before it: A.8.5, secure sign in. After it: A.8.7, malware protection. Every control, by theme, is on the Annex A controls page.