Design and implement protection against physical and environmental threats such as fire, flood, earthquake, and other natural or man-made disasters.
Also written as A7.5, Annex A 7.5, ISO 27001:2022 A.7.5, ISO27001 A.7.5.
Protecting against physical and environmental threats is one of 14 Physical Controls in ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A. Design and implement protection against physical and environmental threats such as fire, flood, earthquake, and other natural or man-made disasters. Physical controls are usually verified by walkthrough as well as by document review, so what an auditor observes on site has to match what the procedure claims — badge logs and visitor records are the standard corroboration.
When preparing your Statement of Applicability (SoA) for A.7.5, gather artefacts such as:
If you run more than one framework, the same evidence usually satisfies all of them. A.7.5 aligns with:
SOC 2: A1.2 Environmental protections, backup and recovery infrastructure
NIST CSF 2.0: PR.IR-02 Protection from environmental threats
A.7.5 consolidates the following ISO 27001:2013 control(s): A.11.1.4. If you are transitioning an existing ISMS, map your prior evidence for these to A.7.5 in your updated SoA.
Annex A controls are not mandatory in the abstract. Clause 6.1.3 requires you to compare your risk treatment plan against Annex A and justify, in the Statement of Applicability, any control you exclude. If your risk assessment surfaces a risk that A.7.5 addresses, excluding it needs a documented, risk-based rationale that an auditor will test.
In two passes. First design: does a documented control exist, is it owned, and does it address the risk? Then operating effectiveness: the auditor samples records from across the audit period to confirm the control actually ran. A Stage 2 audit will typically pull several samples, so evidence that only exists for the month before the audit is a common finding.
ISO 27001 sets no fixed interval — it requires review at "planned intervals" and after significant change. Annual review is the norm most certification bodies expect, with an out-of-cycle review triggered by incidents, major system changes, restructures, or new regulatory obligations. Record the review date and outcome either way; an undated control is treated as unreviewed.
A.7.5 aligns with SOC 2 A1.2 and NIST CSF PR.IR-02. Evidence gathered for one framework will usually satisfy the others, which is the basis for a test-once, satisfy-many control library.
A.7.5 consolidates 1 control(s) from the 2013 edition: A.11.1.4. When transitioning, re-point the existing evidence rather than rebuilding it — the underlying requirement has not changed materially.