What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on CRY-01 Policy for the use of encryption procedures and key management?

Approved cryptography and key management policy carrying its last review date; Table linking each classification level to the required algorithm and minimum key length; List of permitted algorithms and protocol versions with the reasoning for their currency; Record of the legal and regulatory cryptographic constraints taken into account.

What is the most common gap auditors find on CRY-01?

Algorithms named without stating minimum key lengths or acceptable protocol versions

BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) · C5: Cryptography and Key Management

`CRY-01` Policy for the use of encryption procedures and key management

Maintain and issue encryption and key management policies that mandate state-of-the-art algorithms and network protocols, tie encryption strength to the information classification scheme, cover the full key lifecycle, and reflect applicable legal obligations.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), CRY-01. 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

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

Record of the legal and regulatory cryptographic constraints taken into account · Regulator portal / correspondence

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Approved cryptography and key management policy carrying its last review date · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Table linking each classification level to the required algorithm and minimum key length · Policy repository / GRC workspace
List of permitted algorithms and protocol versions with the reasoning for their currency · Document repository

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

Algorithms named without stating minimum key lengths or acceptable protocol versions
No connection drawn between classified information and the encryption strength demanded of it
Permitted algorithm list untouched while the ciphers it lists were being deprecated externally

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

COS-08 Policies for data transmission · CRY-02 Encryption of data for transmission (transport encryption)