What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on SP-02 Review and Approval of Policies and Instructions?

Review calendar listing every security document with its next review due date; Completed review forms naming the expert who performed the assessment and the outcome; Approval evidence dated before the effective date of each revised document; Watch list of legal and regulatory developments considered during the review cycle.

What is the most common gap auditors find on SP-02?

Review date stamped but content untouched with no rationale for leaving it unchanged

BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) · C5: Security Policies and Instructions

`SP-02` Review and Approval of Policies and Instructions

Have subject matter experts review the security policies and instructions for adequacy at least once a year, weighing organisational and technical changes in how the cloud service is delivered and legal or regulatory change, and approve revised versions before they take effect.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), SP-02. 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

Review calendar listing every security document with its next review due date · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Completed review forms naming the expert who performed the assessment and the outcome · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Approval evidence dated before the effective date of each revised document · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Watch list of legal and regulatory developments considered during the review cycle · 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

Review date stamped but content untouched with no rationale for leaving it unchanged
Revised instructions published into use and approved only afterwards
Legal monitoring runs separately and never feeds the document review
Reviews signed by owners who lack the technical knowledge to judge adequacy

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

SP-01 Documentation, communication and provision of policies and instructions · SP-03 Exceptions from Existing Policies and Instructions