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Roles and Responsibilities

What is Roles and Responsibilities?

Clear definitions of what each position or team is expected to do, their authority levels, and their accountability relationships within an organization.

Governance

Each of these is named in at least one of the same controls as roles and responsibilities. The number is how many controls name both.

What the standards actually require on roles and responsibilities

Requirements naming roles and responsibilities across 6 standards, quoted from the control text.

PCI DSS 4.012 controls

Roles and responsibilities for performing activities in Requirement 9 are documented, assigned, and understood

9.1.2 · Roles and responsibilities for performing activities in Requirement 9 are documented, assigned, and understood

Document and communicate what each employee is responsible for in relation to information assets and their security.

CCM-HRS-09 · Personnel Roles and Responsibilities
ISO 27002:20223 controls

Requires information security roles and responsibilities to be defined and allocated in line with what the organisation actually needs, so ownership of each security duty is explicit rather than assumed.

iso-27002-2022::5.2 · Information security roles and responsibilities

Policies and procedures are in place to define and differentiate roles and responsibilities for human-AI configurations and oversight of AI systems.

AIRMF-GV-3.2 · Policies and procedures are in place to define and differentiate roles and responsibilities for human-AI configurations and oversight of AI systems
CIS Controls v82 controls

Assign key roles and responsibilities for incident response, including staff from legal, IT, information security, facilities, public relations, human resources, incident responders, and analysts, as applicable.

CIS-17.5 · Assign Key Roles and Responsibilities

Questions people ask about roles and responsibilities

What is Roles and Responsibilities?
Clear definitions of what each position or team is expected to do, their authority levels, and their accountability relationships within an organization.
Why is Roles and Responsibilities important for compliance?
Roles and Responsibilities is a key concept in Governance. Understanding roles and responsibilities helps organizations meet regulatory requirements, reduce risk, and demonstrate due diligence during audits. Our compliance platform maps 686 frameworks with 311K cross-framework control mappings.
Which compliance frameworks address Roles and Responsibilities?
Roles and Responsibilities appears in the requirement text of PCI DSS 4.0, NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5, Cloud Security Alliance Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) v4.0.1, ISO 27002:2022, NIST AI Risk Management Framework (AI RMF 1.0). Across these standards we have identified 27 controls that name it directly, each linked to the control text on the compliance platform.
Where can I learn more about Roles and Responsibilities?
Explore our compliance framework pages to see how roles and responsibilities applies across different standards and regulations. Our implementation guides provide step-by-step guidance, and the compliance platform offers AI-powered analysis of how this concept maps across 686 frameworks.

See how Roles and Responsibilities applies across compliance frameworks

Our platform maps 686 frameworks with 311K cross-framework control mappings. Explore how this concept is addressed across standards.

Written and maintained by Gerard Blokdyk, The Art of Service.