Annex A 5.7: Threat Intelligence

Annex A 5.7: threat intelligence requirement means you must systematically collect, analyze, and act on threat information that is relevant to your organization, then show evidence that this intelligence feeds risk assessment, vulnerability management, detection, and incident response. Operationalize it by defining sources, owners, cadence, triage rules, and how outputs become tracked security actions. ¹

Key takeaways:

• Define a threat intelligence “runbook” with owners, sources, and trigger events, not just a policy statement. ¹
• Prove actionability: intelligence must create changes (tickets, detections, patch priority, comms), not sit in an inbox. ¹
• Retain a minimum evidence bundle each cycle: inputs, analysis notes, decisions, outputs, and closure of resulting actions. ¹

Annex A 5.7 is frequently misunderstood as “subscribe to a feed.” Auditors and customer diligence teams typically look for something tighter: a repeatable operating process that turns external and internal threat signals into decisions and security work, with traceable evidence. The control sits in the organizational controls section for ISO/IEC 27001:2022 and supports the ISMS goal of reducing risk through informed, timely action. ¹

For a Compliance Officer, CCO, or GRC lead, the fastest path to implementation is to treat threat intelligence as a governed control with defined inputs, processing steps, outputs, and review. That means: assign an accountable owner; choose sources aligned to your technology stack and threat exposure; define what “relevant” means; specify how intelligence is triaged; and integrate outputs into existing workflows like risk management, vulnerability management, security monitoring, and incident response. ¹

This page gives requirement-level guidance you can execute quickly, plus the evidence auditors ask for and the failure modes that cause “minor nonconformity” findings during ISO surveillance and recertification cycles. ¹

Regulatory text

Provided excerpt: “ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Annex A control 5.7 implementation expectation (Threat Intelligence).” ¹

Operator interpretation: You are expected to establish and maintain a threat intelligence capability appropriate to your organization. In practice, “appropriate” gets evaluated through your ISMS scope, risk assessment approach, and operational proof that intelligence is gathered, analyzed, shared with the right roles, and converted into protective actions. ¹

What an auditor is testing: that threat intelligence is (1) defined, (2) operating, and (3) influencing security outcomes in a traceable way, consistent with ISO 27001’s management system expectations. ²

Plain-English requirement (what Annex A 5.7 expects)

You need a repeatable process to:

1. Collect threat information (internal and external) relevant to your environment.
2. Assess and prioritize what matters based on your assets, business services, and exposure.
3. Distribute and act so teams update controls: detection rules, patch priorities, secure configuration, user communications, third-party requirements, or incident response readiness.
4. Retain evidence that the loop runs and that actions close. ¹

A practical definition of “threat intelligence” for this control: curated information about adversaries, techniques, vulnerabilities, indicators, and targeting patterns that you can map to your environment and use to change decisions. ¹

Who it applies to

Entity scope: Organizations implementing ISO/IEC 27001:2022 within the ISMS scope, including service organizations supporting customer environments. ¹

Operational context where it matters most:

• You operate internet-exposed services, APIs, SaaS, or remote access paths.
• You depend on third parties (cloud, MSPs, critical software providers) where new threats emerge outside your perimeter.
• You handle regulated or sensitive data where detection and response timeliness affects contractual and legal outcomes. ¹

Teams typically involved:

• Security Operations (or IT Ops if no SOC)
• Vulnerability management / patch owners
• GRC / risk management
• Incident response lead
• Engineering owners for high-risk services
• Third-party risk management (when intelligence implicates suppliers) ¹

What you actually need to do (step-by-step)

1) Create the control card (make it auditable)

Write a one-page control definition that includes:

• Objective: ensure relevant threat intelligence drives timely risk decisions and security actions.
• Owner (accountable): name a role (e.g., Head of Security Operations) and a backup.
• Participants: GRC, IT Ops, Engineering, IR lead.
• Trigger events: high-severity advisories, active exploitation, major incidents in your industry, critical third-party compromise, major architecture changes.
• Cadence: define how often you review and publish intelligence outputs (choose a cadence that matches your environment; document it).
• Exceptions: what happens if the owner is out, if sources are unavailable, or if no relevant intel is found in a cycle. ¹

If you manage controls in Daydream, store this as the system-of-record “runbook” and map evidence requests to the exact artifacts listed below so audits are a pull, not a scramble. ¹

2) Define “relevance” and your intake sources

Create a short relevance rubric so analysts and auditors see consistency:

• Relevant if it affects in-scope assets, in-scope third parties, critical business services, or common dependencies (identity, email, endpoints, CI/CD, cloud control plane).
• Relevant if it enables credential theft, remote code execution, data exfiltration, or service disruption against your exposed systems.

Then document sources in an intake register. Don’t overbuild; pick sources you can maintain:

• Internal: incident tickets, SIEM alerts, abuse reports, vulnerability scan results, red team findings.
• External: vendor security advisories for your stack, government/CERT alerts where applicable, cloud provider advisories, ISAC-type sharing groups if you participate, reputable threat intel from security vendors you already use. ¹

3) Build a triage workflow that produces decisions

Define triage fields and outcomes, and keep them consistent:

• Intel item ID, date received, source, summary
• Affected assets/services, mapping to asset inventory or service catalog
• Assessment: likelihood and impact in your context (align to your risk methodology)
• Decision: “no action,” “monitor,” “create detection,” “patch/mitigate,” “raise risk,” “third-party follow-up,” “incident response action”
• Assigned owner and due date rules (rules, not promises)

Operational tip: threat intel that cannot be mapped to an owned asset or service usually dies. Require a mapping step, even if it’s “unknown; needs inventory follow-up,” then track that as a separate action. ¹

4) Integrate outputs into existing systems (where action happens)

Your process must land in operational tools:

• Ticketing: create tasks for patching, configuration hardening, detections, or comms.
• SIEM/EDR: document rule creation/updates where intel provides indicators or techniques.
• Vulnerability management: use intel to change prioritization (for example, “active exploitation” triggers faster remediation).
• Risk register: create or update risks when intel shows new exposure patterns.
• Third-party management: if a supplier is implicated, open an issue: confirm exposure, request mitigations, update residual risk. ¹

5) Produce a recurring “intel-to-action” output

Pick one standard output per cycle:

• A short threat intel bulletin to relevant stakeholders, plus an action list; or
• A weekly/monthly “top items and dispositions” report exported from your tracking system.

Keep the content operational: what changed, what to do, who owns it, by when. ¹

6) Run control health checks

Set a recurring control check that answers:

• Did we review sources on schedule?
• Were relevant items triaged?
• Did actions get assigned and closed?
• Do we have evidence of decisions and outcomes?

Track gaps to closure with owners and dates. ¹

Required evidence and artifacts to retain

Auditors want to see both design evidence (what you said you do) and operating evidence (proof you did it).

Minimum evidence bundle (keep per execution cycle)

• Threat intelligence procedure/runbook (version-controlled) and control card with owner/cadence. ¹
• Source register (list of feeds/advisories/groups plus relevance notes). ¹
• Triage log (spreadsheet, case system, or tickets) showing intake → assessment → decision. ¹
• Output artifact (bulletin/report) distributed to named roles or channels. ¹
• Action tracking evidence: tickets, backlog items, rule change records, patch change records, risk register updates. ¹
• Closure proof: ticket resolution notes, deployment/change approvals, verification steps (for example, updated detection rule ID). ¹
• Control health check results and remediation tracking for missed cycles or incomplete actions. ¹

Retention: follow your ISMS document and record control retention rules; auditors mainly care that records are available, consistent, and tamper-resistant. ¹

Common exam/audit questions and hangups

Use these as your pre-audit checklist.

What auditors ask	What they mean	What to show
“Who owns threat intelligence?”	Accountability and continuity	Control card with named role and backup; org chart or RACI snippet
“What are your sources, and why?”	Relevance to scope	Source register mapped to in-scope services/tech
“Show me actions taken from intel.”	Intelligence must drive change	Tickets/changes linked back to intel items
“How do you decide what’s relevant?”	Consistent triage	Relevance rubric + triage log decisions
“How do you ensure it’s ongoing?”	Sustainable cadence	Evidence across multiple cycles + health checks

Frequent implementation mistakes (and how to avoid them)

1. Buying feeds, producing no actions.
   Fix: require every “relevant” item to end in a disposition and (when needed) a ticket in the system your teams already work from. ¹

2. No linkage to ISMS scope.
   Fix: map intelligence to in-scope services/assets. If inventory is weak, create an inventory remediation action and track it. ¹

3. Unowned inbox problem.
   Fix: assign one accountable owner and define backup coverage. Add trigger events so urgent items bypass the normal cadence. ¹

4. “We discussed it in Slack” as evidence.
   Fix: export or capture decisions in a durable record: a triage log, ticket notes, or meeting minutes stored in your ISMS repository. ¹

5. Over-classification of intel outputs.
   Fix: classify outputs appropriately, but don’t block distribution to operators who need to act. Use summarized internal bulletins where needed. ¹

Enforcement context and risk implications

No public enforcement cases were provided in the supplied source catalog for this requirement, so this page does not cite specific enforcement outcomes. ¹

Operational risk still matters: without a working threat intelligence loop, you tend to miss time-sensitive mitigations (active exploitation, supplier compromises, credential campaigns), and you struggle to justify prioritization choices after an incident. Auditors commonly treat this as an “operational effectiveness” gap: process exists on paper, but outputs don’t drive measurable work. ¹

Practical 30/60/90-day execution plan

First 30 days (stand up the control)

• Name the control owner and backup; publish the control card in your GRC system. ¹
• Define your relevance rubric and minimal intake sources tied to in-scope tech. ¹
• Create the triage log template and decision taxonomy; confirm where evidence will live. ¹

By 60 days (operate and prove action)

• Run at least one full cycle: intake → triage → bulletin/report → actions created. ¹
• Integrate with ticketing so actions are assigned to engineering/IT owners with due dates. ¹
• Hold a short stakeholder review to validate: are outputs readable, timely, and producing work? Capture minutes. ¹

By 90 days (stabilize and audit-proof)

• Run repeated cycles and show consistency in triage decisions and outputs. ¹
• Add a control health check and remediation workflow for missed cycles or overdue actions. ¹
• Prepare an “audit packet” in Daydream (or your repository) that bundles the last cycles’ evidence for quick retrieval. ¹

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we need a dedicated threat intel platform to meet Annex A 5.7?

No. You need a defined process with sources, triage, and actions, plus evidence it runs. A spreadsheet plus ticketing can pass if it is consistent and produces traceable outcomes. ¹

What counts as “threat intelligence” versus general security news?

Threat intelligence is information you can map to your environment and convert into a decision or task. General news becomes threat intelligence only after you assess relevance to your in-scope assets and record a disposition. ¹

How do we prove this control is “operating effectively” in an audit?

Show multiple cycles of intake and triage records, the bulletin/report outputs, and the downstream tickets or changes that closed. Auditors look for traceability from intel item to action and verification. ¹

Who should own Annex A 5.7: threat intelligence requirement in a small company with no SOC?

Assign ownership to the role that controls vulnerability management and incident response coordination, often Security Engineering or IT Security. Keep participants lightweight but document backup coverage and escalation triggers. ¹

How do we handle threat intel that suggests a third party is compromised?

Open a tracked third-party issue: confirm whether you use the affected product/service, request supplier mitigations, assess residual risk, and document any compensating controls you deploy. Keep the correspondence and decisions in the evidence bundle. ¹

What if we review intel and decide “no action”?

“No action” is acceptable if you document why it’s not relevant to in-scope assets or why existing controls are sufficient. The audit risk comes from undocumented decisions and missing logs, not from having quiet cycles. ¹

Footnotes

1. ISO/IEC 27001 overview

2. ISO/IEC 27001 overview; ISMS.online Annex A control index