ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 Certification Guide | Management Responsibilities

ISO27002: 2022 Clause 5.4 Management Responsibilities

In this article I lay bare ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 / ISO27002: 2022 Clause 5.4 Management Responsibilities.

A beginners guide, exposing the insider trade secrets, giving you the templates that will save you hours of your life and showing you exactly what you need to do to satisfy it for ISO27001 certification. We show you exactly what changed in the ISO27001:2022 update. I am Stuart Barker the ISO27001 Ninja and this is ISO27001 Annex A 5.4

What is ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 Management Responsibilities?

ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 Management Responsibilities is an ISO27002: 2022 control that requires management to ensure that people apply information security in line with documented policies and procedures.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 Definition

The ISO27001 standard defines Annex A 5.4 Management Responsibilities as:

Management should require all personnel to apply information security in accordance with the established information security policy, topic-specific policies and procedures of the organization.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.4

ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 Implementation Guide

You are going to have to ensure that:

• roles and responsibilities are documented and people are briefed on them before they get access to information
• guidelines for information security expectations are in place and they are shared with people
• information security policies are in place and people are aware that they are mandated
• implement information security training and awareness relevant to people’s roles
• have terms and conditions of employment, contracts or agreements that include information security and relate to the policies
• information security skills and qualifications where relevant are ongoing
• you have a whistleblowing process
• adequate resources are made available for information security related controls and processes.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 Templates

If you want to write these yourself I totally commend you. And pity you in equal measure. Some of these you will need the support of your HR department to provide but you can save months of effort with these templates that take 25 years of experience and distill it in a pack of prewritten best practice awesomeness.

How to comply with ISO27001 Annex A 5.4

To comply with ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 you are going to implement the ‘how’ to the ‘what’ the control is expecting. In short measure you are going to:

• Document your information security roles and responsibilities
• Implement a program of Information Security Training and Awareness and maintain a Communication Plan
• Implement Information Security Management Policies
• Engage a HR specialist to ensure your HR documentation is legal and meets HR best practice
• Ensure you have contracts in place with all staff, contractors and third parties
• Maintain a competency matrix to track the skills and qualifications of staff
• Implement a whistleblowing process
• Free people’s time to work on information security or bring in specialist help

How to pass an audit of ISO27001 Annex A 5.4

To pass an audit of ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 Management Responsibilities you are going to make sure that you have followed the steps above in how to comply.

You are going to do that by first conducting an internal audit, following the How to Conduct an ISO27001 Internal Audit Guide.

What will an audit check?

The audit is going to check a number of areas. Lets go through the main ones

#1 That you have contracts in place

What this means is that you need to show that you have in date contracts in place with all staff, contractors and third parties. Those contracts will explicitly state the informations security requirements.

#2 That you have security training and awareness

You need to implement information security and awareness training relevant to people’s roles. The audit will check that the training has taken place. The audit is also going to check that people have read and accepted the policies that are also relevant to their role. This is one occasion where an information security training tool can greatly help you.

#3 That you have a whistle blowing process

Often overlooked, the requirement for people to be able to report information security related issues whilst being protected. Where this is applicable the process should be documented.

Top 3 Annex ISO27001 A 5.4 Mistakes People Make

The top 3 Mistakes People Make For ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 are

#1 You have no contracts in place

You need to have contracts in place and they need to include relevant information security requirements. This can often be overlooked or the contracts that you have can be out of date. It is a good idea to check before the audit.

#2 One or more members of your team haven’t done what they should have done

Prior to the audit check that all members of the team have done what they should have. Do they know where the policies are? Have they acknowledged them? Did someone join last month and forget to do it? Check!

#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.

Why is ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 Important?

ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 Management Responsibilities is important because the standard requires that information security is driven from the top down and that everyone knows what is expected of them.

The purpose of this control is to ensure that management understand their role in information security and that they ensure that all personnel are aware of their information security responsibilities. It is their job to ensure that personnel fulfil those responsibilities.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.4 FAQ

Matrix of controls and attribute values

Control type	Information security properties	Cybersecurity concepts	Operational capabilities	Security domains
#Preventive	#Confidentiality #Integrity #Availability	#Identify	#Governance	#Governance_and_Ecosystem

See Also

• Guaranteed ISO 27001 Certification up to 10x Faster and 30x Cheaper
• The Ultimate ISO 27001 TOOLKIT so you can do it yourself 
• ISO 27001 Exposed: The facts you must know (Not knowing these could cost you $10,000s!) 
• 25 Things You Must Know Before Going for ISO 27001 Certification (Number 3 will blow your mind!)
• The Ultimate Reference Guide to ISO 27001 Controls

Reference

ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Management