What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on SEC07-BP04 Define scalable data lifecycle management?

Retention schedule per data class; Lifecycle policies configured on the storage services; Masking or tokenisation design applied near the point of ingestion; Provenance or lineage records; Evidence of executed deletions.

What is the most common gap auditors find on SEC07-BP04?

data retained indefinitely because no schedule exists

AWS Well-Architected Security Pillar · Data Protection

`SEC07-BP04` Define scalable data lifecycle management

Define data lifecycle management that scales, covering how data is handled at ingestion, how sensitivity is reduced through masking or tokenisation, retention periods, provenance tracking and destruction.

Source: AWS Well-Architected Security Pillar, SEC07-BP04. The statement above is our statement of the clause, read from the published text and cited so you can check it against the official text, not the instrument verbatim. Open AWS Well-Architected Security Pillar in the compliance library.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

hard

to go live

Policy repository / GRC workspace

where the evidence lives

teal = a system already holds it · olive = produced at each review. To go live: easy when half or more of the artefacts are already held by a system, moderate from a quarter to a half, hard below a quarter.

These are the artefacts auditors commonly ask for on this requirement, our guidance rather than text from the standard. Your assessor decides what is sufficient in your context, and asks for samples across the period when a report covers one.

system holds itEvidence a system already holds

none for this control

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Provenance or lineage records · Document repository
Evidence of executed deletions · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Retention schedule per data class · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Lifecycle policies configured on the storage services · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Masking or tokenisation design applied near the point of ingestion · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

No system holds this evidence for you: it is people and documents. Reminders and routing to the owner still save time. Put the document under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a record with reviewer and date.

Common gaps auditors find

data retained indefinitely because no schedule exists
lifecycle rules configured on some buckets only
deletion claimed but never evidenced
sensitivity reduction applied late, after wide copying

Do this for your whole sheet

Paste the rows you run your controls from and get this mapping for every control at once, with the periodic-review ones flagged and a first move per row. No account for the first run.

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SEC07-BP03 Automate identification and classification · SEC08-BP01 Implement secure key management