ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups

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In this ultimate guide to ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups you will learn

  • What is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6
  • How to implement ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6

I am Stuart Barker, the ISO 27001 Ninja and author of the Ultimate ISO 27001 Toolkit.

With over 30 years industry experience I will show you what’s new, give you ISO 27001 templates, show you examples, do a walkthrough and show you how to implement it for ISO 27001 certification.

What is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6?

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups is an ISO 27001 Annex A control that requires an organisation to establish and maintain contact with security related professional associations, forums and interest groups.

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.

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

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.

Watch the Tutorial

Watch How to implement ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact With Special Interest Groups – and 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.

ISO 27001 Toolkit

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 an 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.

FAQ

What are examples for ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact with Special Interest Groups?

Examples of special interest groups are
Developer Forums
Newsletters on information security
Being on vendors patching mailing list
Being part of a security forum

Why is ISO 27001 Contact with Special Interest Groups important?

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.

Do I have to satisfy ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact with Special Interest Groups for ISO 27001 Certification?

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.

How do you find relevant specialist interest groups?

We heard about this new thing called ‘Google’ that apparently is a great source to find them.

Do I have to write a list of special interest groups that I am part of? Really?

Yes.

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 sample PDF?

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Sample PDF in the ISO 27001 Toolkit.

Where can I get templates for ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact with Special Interest Groups?

ISO 27001 templates for Annex A 5.6 Contact with Special Interest Groups are located in the ISO 27001 Toolkit.

How hard is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact with Special Interest Groups?

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 is not hard. It is stating the bleeding obvious.

How long will ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact with Special Interest Groups take me?

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 will take approximately 1 hour to complete if you are starting from nothing and doing it yourself.

How much will ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 cost me?

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.

Are there free templates for ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6?

There are templates for ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 located in the ISO 27001 Toolkit.

ISO 27001 Controls and Attribute Values

Control typeInformation
security properties
Cybersecurity
concepts
Operational
capabilities
Security domains
PreventiveConfidentialityProtectGovernanceDefence
IntegrityRespond
AvailabilityRecover
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ISO 27001:2022 requirements

ISO 27001:2022 Annex A 5 - Organisational Controls

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.1 Policies for information security

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.2 Information Security Roles and Responsibilities

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.3 Segregation of duties

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.4 Management responsibilities

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.5 Contact with authorities

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.6 Contact with special interest groups

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.7 Threat intelligence – new

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.8 Information security in project management

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.9 Inventory of information and other associated assets – change

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.10 Acceptable use of information and other associated assets – change

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.11 Return of assets

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.11 Return of assets

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.13 Labelling of information

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.14 Information transfer

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.15 Access control

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.16 Identity management

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.17 Authentication information – new

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.18 Access rights – change

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.19 Information security in supplier relationships

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.20 Addressing information security within supplier agreements

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.21 Managing information security in the ICT supply chain – new

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.22 Monitoring, review and change management of supplier services – change

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.23 Information security for use of cloud services – new

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.24 Information security incident management planning and preparation – change

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.25 Assessment and decision on information security events 

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.26 Response to information security incidents

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.27 Learning from information security incidents

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.28 Collection of evidence

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.29 Information security during disruption – change

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.31 Identification of legal, statutory, regulatory and contractual requirements

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.32 Intellectual property rights

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.33 Protection of records

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.34 Privacy and protection of PII

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.35 Independent review of information security

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.36 Compliance with policies and standards for information security

ISO 27001 Annex A 5.37 Documented operating procedures 

ISO 27001:2022 Annex A 8 - Technology Controls

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.1 User Endpoint Devices

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.2 Privileged Access Rights

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.3 Information Access Restriction

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.4 Access To Source Code

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.5 Secure Authentication

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.6 Capacity Management

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.7 Protection Against Malware

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.8 Management of Technical Vulnerabilities

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.9 Configuration Management 

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.10 Information Deletion

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.11 Data Masking

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.12 Data Leakage Prevention

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.13 Information Backup

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.14 Redundancy of Information Processing Facilities

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.15 Logging

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.16 Monitoring Activities

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.17 Clock Synchronisation

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.18 Use of Privileged Utility Programs

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.19 Installation of Software on Operational Systems

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.20 Network Security

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.21 Security of Network Services

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.22 Segregation of Networks

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.23 Web Filtering

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.24 Use of CryptographyISO27001 Annex A 8.25 Secure Development Life Cycle

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.26 Application Security Requirements

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.27 Secure Systems Architecture and Engineering Principles

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.28 Secure Coding

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.29 Security Testing in Development and Acceptance

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.30 Outsourced Development

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.31 Separation of Development, Test and Production Environments

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.32 Change Management

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.33 Test Information

ISO 27001 Annex A 8.34 Protection of information systems during audit testing