ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 Certification Guide | Contact With Authorities

ISO27002: 2022 Clause 5.5 Contact with Authorities

In this article I lay bare ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 / ISO27002: 2022 Clause 5.5 Contact with Authorities.

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 5.5

What is ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 Contact with Authorities?

ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 Contact with Authorities is an ISO27002: 2022 control that requires an organisation to establish and maintain contact with authorities that are relevant to them.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 Definition

The ISO27001 standard defines Annex A 5.5 Contact with Authorities as:

The organization should establish and maintain contact with relevant authorities.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.5

ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 Implementation Guide

You are going to have to ensure that:

• you identify and document what authorities apply to you
• in what circumstances you would contact them
• how information security incidents should be reported if relevant
• understand what expectations these authorities have, if any
• include relevant contact steps in your incident management processes
• include relevant contact steps in your business continuity and disaster recovery processes

People often scratch their heads at this one but an easy win is the contact with your data protection regulator that is likely mandated in law. In addition you can consider the likes of utility companies for power and water, health and safety if relevant, fire departments for business continuity and incident management, perhaps your telecoms provider for routing if lines go down.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 Templates

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 5.5

To comply with ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 you are going to implement the ‘how’ to the ‘what’ the control is expecting. In short measure you are going to:

• List the relevant authorities and document your who, how and when you will contact authorities

How to pass an audit of ISO27001 Annex A 5.5

To pass an audit of ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 Contact with Authorities 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 a list of authorities you would contact

What this means is that you need to show that you have a list of authorities that you have considered and are in scope for you.

#2 That you have a process to contact them

The process may be straightforward. Many authorities have pre defined ways in which you contact them. Just write them down.

#3 That you have contacted authorities

There is not an expectation that you have contacted everyone on your list. It just wont be relevant. But some of those contacts will be mandated in law or regulation, and for those, you should have evidence the contact took place. A simple example would be registering with the data protection supervisory body.

Top 3 Annex ISO27001 A 5.5 Mistakes People Make

The top 3 Mistakes People Make For ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 are

#1 You didn’t register with the Data Protection registrar

Often a legal requirement, make sure you have registered as a data controller or data processor, which ever applies, with the relevant bodies. They will check.

#2 You don’t have a list of relevant authorities

You thought it was obvious so didn’t write it down. Wrong. Write it down to show you considered it.

#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 5.5 Important?

Some would argue that ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 Contact with Authorities is not that important as it is glaringly obvious. You would contact the fire department if you had a fire. You would contact the police if a crime was committed. I am not here to disagree with you. But the standard wants these things documenting so document them.

The purpose of this control is to ensure appropriate flow of information takes place with respect to information security between the organization and relevant legal, regulatory and supervisory authorities.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.5 FAQ

Matrix of controls and attribute values

Control type	Information security properties	Cybersecurity concepts	Operational capabilities	Security domains
#Preventive #Corrective	#Confidentiality #Integrity #Availability	#Identify #Protect #Respond #Recover	#Governance	#Defence #Resilience

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