ISO 42001 AI Management System
ISO 42001 gives organisations a management system for artificial intelligence. It is useful when AI is moving from experiments into real products, customer workflows, employee tooling, or regulated decision support.
The standard follows the same management-system rhythm as ISO 27001: understand the organisation, get leadership commitment, plan objectives and risks, support the programme, operate controls, evaluate performance, and keep improving.
This guide focuses on practical implementation: what to put in place, what evidence to keep, and how to make ISO 42001 work alongside ISO 27001, SOC 2, privacy, and EU AI Act readiness.
Make AI governance operational, not theoretical.
Use this path when AI tools, models, suppliers, and human review need owners, controls, and audit-ready evidence.
Readiness check
Place ISO 42001 beside SOC 2, ISO 27001, and PCI DSS priorities.
DocsAI use policy
Copy the Markdown policy for approved tools, data rules, and human review.
PoliciesIT policy templates
Supplier, data handling, access, incident, and AI policies in one library.
MapControl-to-policy map
Tie AI governance controls back to policies, owners, evidence, and review dates.
ControlsAI control areas
Control pages for AI policies, lifecycle, data, suppliers, and monitoring.
GuideEU AI Act guide
Risk tiers, documentation, monitoring, and governance concepts for AI systems.
ToolsCompliance software
Compare Vanta, Drata, Secureframe, and Sprinto for evidence operations.
Clauses 4 to 10
All requirementsContext of the organization
Define why AI matters to the organisation, who is affected by it, and what parts of the business sit inside the AI management system.
Clause 5Leadership
Make senior leadership accountable for responsible AI, policy approval, role assignment, and integration with business processes.
Clause 6Planning
Plan how the organisation will assess AI risks and opportunities, set measurable objectives, and manage changes to the AIMS.
Clause 7Support
Provide the people, skills, communication, documentation, and records needed for the AI management system to operate.
Clause 8Operation
Run the processes that control AI systems across design, acquisition, development, deployment, use, monitoring, and retirement.
Clause 9Performance evaluation
Measure whether the AIMS is working, audit it, and have leadership review performance and needed changes.
Clause 10Improvement
Correct failures, learn from incidents and audits, and continually improve the AI management system.
AI Control Areas
All control areasAI policies
Set direction for responsible AI use and make policy expectations clear to builders, buyers, operators, and users.
A.3Internal organization
Assign accountability and decision rights for AI governance across leadership, product, engineering, legal, security, privacy, and operations.
A.4Resources for AI systems
Ensure the organisation has the people, tools, data, infrastructure, and budget needed to govern AI systems properly.
A.5AI system impact assessment
Understand who may be affected by an AI system and what harms, benefits, rights impacts, or business impacts may occur.
A.6AI system lifecycle
Control AI systems from idea and design through data work, model selection, testing, release, operation, change, and retirement.
A.7Data for AI systems
Govern data used for AI so it is lawful, suitable, representative enough for the purpose, protected, and traceable.
A.8Information for interested parties
Provide appropriate transparency to users, customers, staff, regulators, auditors, and affected people.
A.9Use of AI systems
Control how AI systems are used in practice so outputs are reviewed, limitations are understood, and misuse is detected.
A.10Third-party and customer relationships
Manage AI risks introduced by model providers, SaaS tools, implementation partners, customers, and downstream users.
A.11Responsible use
Make responsible AI principles operational, including fairness, accountability, transparency, privacy, security, safety, and human agency.
A.12AI objectives and metrics
Define measurable objectives for AI performance and governance so the AIMS can be evaluated and improved.
How ISO 42001 fits with ISO 27001
ISO 27001 protects information security. ISO 42001 governs AI systems and their organisational impact. A practical programme reuses the ISMS for document control, risk treatment, audit, supplier assurance, access, logging, incidents, and continual improvement, then adds AI-specific inventory, impact assessment, lifecycle, transparency, and human oversight controls.
Map to ISO 27001 controlsAutomate evidence collection
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AI governance, made operational
ISO 42001, EU AI Act, and security-control implementation notes. No spam.