November 25, 2025

Template: ISO 27001 Internal Audit Checklist

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Preparing for an ISO 27001 certification audit starts with a strong internal audit. This checklist—created by Vanta and BD Emerson—guides you through every step of evaluating your Information Security Management System (ISMS) before the external audit.

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The customizable checklist walks you through:

How to define your audit scope, schedule, and roles
Internal audit requirements by clause (4–10)
Statement of Applicability (SoA) guidance for Annex A controls
Post-audit remediation and continual improvement

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Built to be audit-friendly, the checklist helps you identify gaps early, align your teams, and track progress toward ISO 27001 readiness—all while saving valuable time.

Access Review Stage	Content / Functionality
Across all stages	Easily create and save a new access review at a point in time View detailed audit evidence of historical access reviews
Setup access review procedures	Define a global access review procedure that stakeholders can follow, ensuring consistency and mitigation of human error in reviews Set your access review frequency (monthly, quarterly, etc.) and working period/deadlines
Consolidate account access data from systems	Integrate systems using dozens of pre-built integrations, or “connectors”. System account and HRIS data is pulled into Vanta. Upcoming integrations include Zoom and Intercom (account access), and Personio (HRIS) Upload access files from non-integrated systems View and select systems in-scope for the review
Review, approve, and deny user access	Select the appropriate systems reviewer and due date Get automatic notifications and reminders to systems reviewer of deadlines Automatic flagging of “risky” employee accounts that have been terminated or switched departments Intuitive interface to see all accounts with access, account accept/deny buttons, and notes section Track progress of individual systems access reviews and see accounts that need to be removed or have access modified Bulk sort, filter, and alter accounts based on account roles and employee title
Assign remediation tasks to system owners	Built-in remediation workflow for reviewers to request access changes and for admin to view and manage requests Optional task tracker integration to create tickets for any access changes and provide visibility to the status of tickets and remediation
Verify changes to access	Focused view of accounts flagged for access changes for easy tracking and management Automated evidence of remediation completion displayed for integrated systems Manual evidence of remediation can be uploaded for non-integrated systems
Report and re-evaluate results	Auditor can log into Vanta to see history of all completed access reviews Internals can see status of reviews in progress and also historical review detail