A.5.6 ISO 27001

ISO 27001 A.5.6: Contact with special interest groups

What This Control Requires

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

In Plain Language

You cannot secure your organisation in isolation. The threat landscape moves too fast for any single team to keep up alone. This control is about plugging into the wider security community so you benefit from collective intelligence.

That means engaging with industry-specific ISACs (Information Sharing and Analysis Centres), professional associations like ISACA or (ISC)2, vendor security advisory lists, and open security forums. These groups give you early warnings about vulnerabilities, practical guidance on emerging threats, and a way to benchmark your practices against peers.

This is especially valuable for smaller organisations that do not have large internal security teams. Active participation lets you tap into specialised expertise when you need it, without having to hire for every niche skill. Auditors also like to see it - it shows you are taking a proactive approach rather than just reacting to incidents.

How to Implement

Identify the groups that matter for your industry, technology stack, and security needs. Think about industry-specific ISACs, professional bodies like ISACA and (ISC)2, vendor security advisory lists for your platforms, open-source security communities, regional cybersecurity groups, and threat intelligence sharing communities.

Sign up and assign specific team members to monitor each group. Set up a process for receiving, evaluating, and acting on intelligence from these sources. When a new vulnerability advisory drops that affects your stack, there should be a clear path from "we received this" to "we have assessed the impact and initiated remediation."

Build an internal dissemination process so relevant information reaches the right people. Maintain records of what intelligence you received and what you did about it - auditors will ask.

Encourage your security team to actively participate: attend conferences, join webinars, contribute to local chapter meetings. This improves your organisational capability and helps with retention - security people want to grow their skills.

Review your memberships annually. Drop groups that are not adding value, pick up new ones as your technology landscape evolves. Keep a register of all memberships and who is responsible for each.

Evidence Your Auditor Will Request

Register of special interest groups and professional associations with membership details
Records of intelligence received and actions taken in response
Evidence of active participation such as meeting attendance or forum contributions
Process documentation for handling threat intelligence from external groups
Annual review of group memberships and their relevance

Common Mistakes

Organization is not a member of any relevant security groups or forums
Memberships exist but no one actively monitors or engages with the groups
Intelligence received from groups is not evaluated or acted upon systematically
No process for disseminating relevant threat information internally
Group memberships have not been reviewed for relevance in years

Related Controls Across Frameworks

Framework	Control ID	Relationship
SOC 2	CC7.2	Partial overlap
NIS2	Art.29	Related

Frequently Asked Questions

Which special interest groups should we join?

Start with what is most relevant to you: your industry ISAC, professional associations for your security team (ISACA, (ISC)2), vendor security advisories for your key platforms, and your national CERT mailing lists. Local security meetups and conferences are also worth it for networking and staying current. You do not need to join everything - focus on groups that will actually give you actionable intelligence.

Is passive membership sufficient or do we need active participation?

Passive monitoring of advisories is the minimum, but active participation is where the real value is. Attending meetings, contributing to discussions, sharing anonymised threat information - that is how you build the relationships that help when you actually need them. It also looks much better to auditors. They want to see genuine engagement, not just a list of subscriptions nobody reads.

Track ISO 27001 compliance in one place

AuditFront helps you manage every ISO 27001 control, collect evidence, and stay audit-ready.

Start Free Assessment