ISO 27001 Contact with Special Interest Groups
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 is about contact with special interest groups which means that you should record any outside groups you are involved in that care about information security and how you interact with them to stay up to date.
Table of contents
- ISO 27001 Contact with Special Interest Groups
- What is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6?
- How to implement ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6
- Watch the ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Tutorial
- ISO 27001 Templates
- How to comply
- How to pass the audit
- What the auditor will check
- Top 3 Mistakes People Make
- ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 FAQ
- Related ISO 27001 Controls
- Further Reading
- ISO 27001 Controls and Attribute Values
What is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6?
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups is an ISO 27001 control that requires an organisation to establish and maintain contact with security related professional associations, forums and interest groups.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Purpose
The purpose of ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 is to ensure the appropriate flow of information takes place with respect to information security.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Definition
The ISO 27001 standard defines Annex A 5.6 as:
The organisation should establish and maintain contact with special interest groups or other specialist security forums and professional associations.
ISO 27001:2022 Annex A 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups
ISO 27001:2022 Implementation Suite
Accelerate certification with the auditor-verified documentation framework.
How to implement ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6
You are going to have to ensure that you identify and document any professional associations, forums or interest groups you are involved with.
People often scratch their heads at this one but have a think about what technology you are involved with. Are you part of a security vendors newsletter, patch notification, or user group. Are you a developer that has access to beta and early release development tools or versions of software for testing and implementation? Worse case can you join a local security chapter, attend a local event, sign up to a government communication scheme on information security threats.
What you are showing is that you are involved in getting knowledge about best practice, you are up to date with current best practices, that you get early warnings of alerts, advisories and patches. It can show that you got specialist information security advice and share and exchange information. Sign up to the High Table newsletter and tick the box.
Watch the ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Tutorial
In the video ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups Explained show you how to implement it and how to pass the audit.
ISO 27001 Templates
Everything you need to meet this control is provided in the ISO 27001 Toolkit which has been designed so you can DIY your ISO 27001 Certification.
How to comply
To comply with ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 you are going to implement the ‘how’ to the ‘what’ the control is expecting. In short measure you are going to:
- List anything that you think is relevant no matter how tenuous the link
- List forums you are in, newsletters you sign up to, vendor communications you get on patching
- Consider joining or signing up to local security chapters or government communications
- Look at the technology you have and see if there are any special interest groups that apply to it that you can join
How to pass the audit
To pass an audit of ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups 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 main ones
1. That you are involved in a special interest group
They will check that you are part of a group. It is unlikely they will dig too deeply. Who ever you say is part of a group may be asked about it, their involvement and what they get from it.
Top 3 Mistakes People Make
The top 3 Mistakes People Make For ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 are
1. You didn’t register with any special interest groups
Not even one person in your company could find even a tenuous link to something that would satisfy this and they fail you on it.
2. You registered but you didn’t engage
You thought it was a tick box so you registered and you never engaged. As a result you actually have no idea what the special interest group is, does or gives you as benefit. At least before the audit have a basic understanding of what you signed up to.
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.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 FAQ
Examples of special interest groups are
Developer Forums
Newsletters on information security
Being on vendors patching mailing list
Being part of a security forum
Some would argue that ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact with Special Interest Groups is not that important as it is glaringly obvious. 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.
Yes. Clearly it is stating the bleeding obvious but this has never stopped the standard before it wont stop it now. They are explicitly required for ISO 27001.
We heard about this new thing called ‘Google’ that apparently is a great source to find them.
Yes.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Sample PDF in the ISO 27001 Toolkit.
ISO 27001 templates for Annex A 5.6 Contact with Special Interest Groups are located in the ISO 27001 Toolkit.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 is not hard. It is stating the bleeding obvious.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 will take approximately 1 hour to complete if you are starting from nothing and doing it yourself.
The cost of ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 will depend how you go about it. If you do it yourself it will be free but will take you about 1 hour so the cost is lost opportunity cost as you tie up resource doing something that can easily be downloaded.
There are templates for ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 located in the ISO 27001 Toolkit.
Related ISO 27001 Controls
ISO 27001 Clause 4.2 Understanding The Needs And Expectations of Interested Parties
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5 Contact With Authorities
Further Reading
The complete guide to ISO/IEC 27002:2022
Business Continuity Plan Template
ISO 27001 Controls and Attribute Values
| Control type | Information security properties | Cybersecurity concepts | Operational capabilities | Security domains |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Preventive | Confidentiality | Protect | Governance | Defence |
| Integrity | Respond | |||
| Availability | Recover |
About the author
Stuart Barker is a veteran practitioner with over 30 years of experience in systems security and risk management.
Holding an MSc in Software and Systems Security, Stuart combines academic rigor with extensive operational experience. His background includes over a decade leading Data Governance for General Electric (GE) across Europe, as well as founding and exiting a successful cyber security consultancy.
As a qualified ISO 27001 Lead Auditor and Lead Implementer, Stuart possesses distinct insight into the specific evidence standards required by certification bodies. He has successfully guided hundreds of organizations – from high-growth technology startups to enterprise financial institutions – through the audit lifecycle.
His toolkits represents the distillation of that field experience into a standardised framework. They move beyond theoretical compliance, providing a pragmatic, auditor-verified methodology designed to satisfy ISO/IEC 27001:2022 while minimising operational friction.