ISO27001 Annex A 5.6 Certification Guide | Contact With Special Interest Groups

ISO27002: 2022 Clause 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups

In this article I lay bare ISO27001 Annex A 5.6 / ISO27002: 2022 Clause 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups.

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 5.6

What is ISO27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups?

ISO27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups is an ISO27002: 2022 control that requires an organisation to establish and maintain contact with security related professional associations, forums and interest groups.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.6 Definition

The ISO27001 standard defines Annex A 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups as:

The organization should establish and maintain contact with special interest groups or other specialist security forums and professional associations.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.6

ISO27001 Annex A 5.6 Implementation Guide

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.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.6 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 5.6

To comply with ISO27001 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 an audit of ISO27001 Annex A 5.6

To pass an audit of ISO27001 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.

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 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 Annex ISO27001 A 5.6 Mistakes People Make

The top 3 Mistakes People Make For ISO27001 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.

Why is ISO27001 Annex A 5.6 Important?

Some would argue that ISO27001 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.

ISO27001 Annex A 5.6 FAQ

Matrix of controls and attribute values

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

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