How to implement ISO 27001 Monitor, Review And Change Management Of Supplier Services and Pass the Audit
Table of contents
ISO 27001 Monitor, Review And Change Management Of Supplier Services
In this ultimate guide to ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 Monitor, Review And Change Management Of Supplier Services you will learn
- What is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22
- How to implement ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22
I am Stuart Barker, the ISO 27001 Ninja and author of the Ultimate ISO 27001 Toolkit.
With over 30 years industry experience I will show you what’s new, give you ISO 27001 templates, show you examples, do a walkthrough and show you how to implement it for ISO 27001 certification.
What is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22?
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 Monitor, review and change management of supplier services is an ISO 27001 Annex A control that requires an organisation to maintain an agreed level of service and information security in line with legal agreements.
Purpose
The purpose of ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 is a preventive control that ensures you maintain an agreed level of information security and service delivery in line with supplier agreements.
Definition
The ISO 27001 standard defines ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 as:
The organisation should regularly monitor, review, evaluate and manage change in supplier information security practices and service delivery.
ISO 27001:2022 Annex A 5.22 Monitor, review and change management of supplier services
In plain English?
Ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of your suppliers, their products and their services through monitoring and review.
Implementation Guide
As with all the clauses that relate to supplier management we are looking to assign the responsibility to a person or a team with the skills and resources to be able to track that requirements are being met and where not, they are being addressed.
In basic terms it is about making sure that the terms and conditions in legal agreements that relate to information security are being met. It is about managing issues, problems and incidents as the occur and if changes are needed to suppliers that those changes do not adversely impact the business.
You are going to:
- Those service performance levels are going to be monitored, most likely via reports or metrics or dashboards.
- Check and respond to changes made by suppliers such as updates, changes to process, changes to controls
- Where supplier services change to monitor and respond to those
- Keep your eye on the terms and conditions of the agreements and that they are followed
- Ensure those pesky suppliers are evaluated and maintain adequate security
It isn’t really that hard although you can over complicate it very easily. Have agreements in place, make sure they are followed, check them and respond when things go wrong.
We are not teaching people how to do supplier management or change it. What is here is common sense.
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How to comply
To comply with ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 you are going to implement the ‘how’ to the ‘what’ the control is expecting. In short measure you are going to
- Implement a topic specific policy
- Implement a supplier management process
- Include in your supplier management process supplier acquisition and supplier transfer
- Implement a third party supplier register
- Have agreements with all suppliers that cover information security requirements
- Have information security assurances for critical suppliers as a minimum and ideally all relevant suppliers
- Monitor those suppliers
- Respond to adverse incidents in a structured way
How to pass an audit
To pass an audit of ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 Monitor, review and change management of supplier services you are going to make sure that you have followed the steps above in how to comply.
What the auditor will check
The audit is going to check a number of areas. Lets go through the most common
1. That you have a supplier agreements in place
The auditor is going to check that you have agreements in place with suppliers that cover the information security requirements. It will check that those agreements are in date and cover the products and / or services acquired.
2. That you have an ISO 27001 Supplier Register
You will need an ISO 27001 Supplier Register to record and manage your suppliers. Make sure it is up to date and reflects your reality.
3. Documentation
They are going to look at audit trails and all your documentation and see that is classified and labelled. All the documents that you show them, as a minimum if they are confidential should be labelled as such. Is the document up to date. Has it been reviewed in the last 12 months. Does the version control match.
Top 3 Mistakes People Make
The top 3 Mistakes People Make For ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 are
1. You have do not monitor suppliers
Make sure that there are reviews and monitors in place. Perhaps meetings. Perhaps reports. Perhaps dashboards. Be sure to be able to evidence that you review and monitor those suppliers. You will have processes for adverse advents so do not be surprised if you are asked to evidence an adverse event, problem or issue and that you followed your process.
2. You have no assurance they are doing the right thing for information security
Make sure you have done your security assessment and can place your hands on an in date certificate such as an ISO 27001 Certification for assurance they are doing the right thing. It needs to be in date a cover the products and / or services you have acquired and are using form the supplier.
3. Your document and version control is wrong
Keeping your document version control up to date, making sure that version numbers match where used, having a review evidenced in the last 12 months, having documents that have no comments in are all good practices.
FAQ
For ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 Monitor, review and change management of supplier services you will need the ISO 27001 Supplier Policy.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 Monitor, review and change management of supplier services is important because suppliers represent the biggest risk to you. If they are not doing the right thing it is your reputation, your finances, your success that is stake. Get supplier management correct and reduce the risk.
There are templates that support ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 located in the ISO 27001 Toolkit.
Yes. Whilst the ISO 27001 Annex A clauses are for consideration to be included in your Statement of Applicability there is no reason we can think of that would allow you to exclude ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22. Monitor, review and change management of supplier services is a fundamental part of your control framework and any management system. It is explicitly required for ISO 27001.
Yes. You can write the policies for ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 yourself. You will need a copy of the standard and approximately 5 days of time to do it. It would be advantageous to have a background in information security management systems.
ISO 27001 templates that support ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 are located in the ISO 27001 Toolkit.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 is hard. The documentation required is extensive. We would recommend templates to fast track your implementation.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 will take approximately 1 to 3 month to complete if you are starting from nothing and doing a full implementation. With the right risk management approach and an ISO 27001 Template Toolkit it should take you less than 1 day.
The cost of ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 will depend how you go about it. If you do it yourself it will be free but will take you about 1 to 3 months so the cost is lost opportunity cost as you tie up resource doing something that can easily be downloaded and managed via risk management.
ISO 27001 controls and attribute values
| Control type | Information security properties | Cybersecurity concepts | Operational capabilities | Security domains |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preventive | Confidentiality | Identify | Supplier relationships security | Protection |
| Integrity | Governance and ecosystem | |||
| Availability | Defence | |||
| Information security assurance |