A.5.1: AI System Policies
Documented AI policies aligned to organisational objectives.
Last reviewed October 2026
Why A.5.1 evidence is hard
A written AI policy is not something this platform stores, and not something an adversarial test can grade. The narrower question is testable. Where a policy makes a technical claim - this assistant will not disclose internal instructions, that agent may not spend money unattended - a probe can check whether the running system honours it on the day it is asked. Existence of the policy is evidenced from your document set. Adherence to it, in part, from the scan record.
How Penaxtra maps to A.5.1
The ISO/IEC 42001 A.5.1 identifier is attached at creation, so a finding reaches the evidence export already in the structure an assessor reads. Twenty-five cross-framework overlap pairs are pre-computed, so where this same weakness also lands on another framework, that control identifier rides the same finding instead of being re-derived. Every finding carries the probe that was sent, a SHA-256 digest of the response it provoked, the tier that decided the verdict and its status history from first observation to close. Identity survives a re-scan: a control you closed and that comes back reopens under the same row with a reopen count, rather than arriving as a new issue.
A.5.1 capabilities
Findings tagged with the ISO/IEC 42001 A.5.1 identifier
Penaxtra severity for this control (high)
Cross-framework identifiers attached to the same finding where controls overlap
PDF and JSON evidence export with the control identifier attached
A.5.1 control coverage
Findings for A.5.1 carry the ISO/IEC 42001 A.5.1 identifier along with the corresponding control identifiers in the other frameworks Penaxtra maps, so one result is reflected across each mapped framework.
Frequently asked
What is A.5.1 (AI System Policies)?
Documented AI policies aligned to organisational objectives. It is an ISO/IEC 42001 control; Penaxtra assesses it at high severity.
How does Penaxtra test for A.5.1?
The ISO/IEC 42001 A.5.1 identifier is attached at creation, so a finding reaches the evidence export already in the structure an assessor reads. Twenty-five cross-framework overlap pairs are pre-computed, so where this same weakness also lands on another framework, that control identifier rides the same finding instead of being re-derived. Every finding carries the probe that was sent, a SHA-256 digest of the response it provoked, the tier that decided the verdict and its status history from first observation to close. Identity survives a re-scan: a control you closed and that comes back reopens under the same row with a reopen count, rather than arriving as a new issue.
Does a finding for A.5.1 help with an audit?
Each finding is tagged with the ISO/IEC 42001 A.5.1 identifier and exported in the PDF and JSON evidence pack, so it appears on the auditor control list with the identifier already attached.