ISO/IEC 27017 FAQ Cloud Service Agreements

Start with the operational decision: define what Cloud Service Agreements means in your ISO/IEC 27017 scope, who owns it, and what record proves the decision is current.

In practice, the agreement should spell out the cloud service scope, the shared-responsibility split, security and privacy obligations, incident notification and response duties, subcontractor or subprocessor controls, data-location or transfer commitments, logging and monitoring expectations, change and review rules, and exit or service-termination rights. For cloud services, the provider/customer split should be written before requesting evidence so the same control can be provider-owned, customer-owned, or shared depending on the service model and contract.

The evidence should show the process operating. For this artifact, the strongest record usually includes shared-responsibility matrix, cloud service agreement, provider assurance, customer configuration evidence, access reviews, logs, and change records.

Avoid evidence that only repeats a requirement. A reviewer should be able to see the actual owner, date, system, supplier, AI system, service, incident, risk, or control sample behind the answer.

The person who can fund, operate, and correct the process should own the decision; governance should review consistency and exceptions.

For high-impact changes, approval should include the teams affected by the evidence: security, privacy, resilience, supplier management, AI governance, legal, risk, or business service owners as relevant.

Review it at planned intervals and whenever the underlying scope, service, supplier, control, risk, AI system, personal data flow, incident process, or customer commitment changes.

A stale record is worse than a short record. If the facts change, update the evidence and mark what changed so the next reviewer can trust the page.