What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on AM-04 Decommissioning of Hardware?

Retirement approvals for hardware withdrawn from the production estate during the period; Sanitisation or destruction certificates that identify the media by serial number; Erasure tool output recording the method used and the verification result; Chain of custody documentation for media released to a disposal contractor.

What is the most common gap auditors find on AM-04?

Failed drives returned to the vendor under warranty without prior sanitisation

BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) · C5: Asset Management

`AM-04` Decommissioning of Hardware

Require documented approval under the applicable policies before hardware supporting production cloud service components is withdrawn from use, and make withdrawal include complete and permanent erasure of the data or proper physical destruction of the storage media.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), AM-04. 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 BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) in the compliance library.

The edition of the catalogue is not stamped here; check the edition your attestation is issued against.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

moderate

to go live

Document repository

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

Erasure tool output recording the method used and the verification result · Document repository

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Retirement approvals for hardware withdrawn from the production estate during the period · Document repository
Sanitisation or destruction certificates that identify the media by serial number · Data governance / DLP tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Chain of custody documentation for media released to a disposal contractor · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Start with the 1 of 4 artefacts that already live in a system (Document repository); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Failed drives returned to the vendor under warranty without prior sanitisation
Destruction certificates do not identify which specific media they cover
Erasure carried out but the verification step is missing from the record
Equipment physically removed before the withdrawal approval was obtained

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.

Build my evidence sheet

AM-03 Commissioning of Hardware · AM-05 Commitment to Permissible Use, Safe Handling and Return of Assets