How To Implement ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5 Contact With Authorities

ISO 27001 Contact With Authorities

I am going to show you what ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5 Contact With Authorities is, what’s new, give you ISO 27001 templates, an ISO 27001 toolkit, show you examples, do a walkthrough and show you how to implement it.

I am Stuart Barker the ISO 27001 Ninja and using over two decades of experience on hundreds of ISO 27001 audits and ISO 27001 certifications I show you exactly what changed in the ISO 27001:2022 update and exactly what you need to do for ISO 27001 certification.

What is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5 Contact With Authorities?

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5 Contact with Authorities is an ISO 27001 control that requires an organisation to establish and maintain contact with authorities that are relevant to them.

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5 Purpose

Annex A 5.5 is both a preventive control and a corrective control that ensures appropriate flow of information takes place with respect to information security between the organisation and relevant legal, regulatory and supervisory authorities.

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5 Definition

The ISO 27001 standard defines ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5 as

The organisation should establish and maintain contact with relevant authorities.

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5 Contact with Authorities

ISO 27001 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.

ISO 27001 Templates

The ISO 27001 Toolkit is your fast track to Do It Yourself ISO 27001 certification and includes everything you need to meet the requirements of this control.

How to comply

To comply with ISO 27001 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

To pass an audit of ISO 27001 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 ISO 27001 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 Mistakes People Make for ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5

The top 3 Mistakes People Make for ISO 27001 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 Contact with Authorities important?

Some would argue that ISO 27001 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 organisation and relevant legal, regulatory and supervisory authorities.

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5 FAQ

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Controls and Attribute Values

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

Reference

ISO/IEC 27001 Information Security Management