What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on SSO-03 Directory of service providers and suppliers?

Export of the supplier directory showing all mandatory data fields populated; Record of the last completeness and accuracy check with reviewer name and date; Directory entries showing data processing and storage locations for sampled suppliers; Link from each directory entry to the contractual compliance proof held on file.

What is the most common gap auditors find on SSO-03?

Directory kept in spreadsheets that omit the start of service usage date

BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) · C5: Control and Monitoring of Service Providers and Suppliers

`SSO-03` Directory of service providers and suppliers

Maintain a register of the providers and suppliers contributing to the service, recording company name, address, processing and storage locations, contacts on both sides, service description, risk classification, start of use and compliance proof, and verify entries annually.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), SSO-03. 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

Vendor register / contract 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

Export of the supplier directory showing all mandatory data fields populated · Vendor register / contract repository

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Record of the last completeness and accuracy check with reviewer name and date · Vendor register / contract repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Directory entries showing data processing and storage locations for sampled suppliers · Vendor register / contract repository
Link from each directory entry to the contractual compliance proof held on file · Vendor register / contract repository

First move

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

Common gaps auditors find

Directory kept in spreadsheets that omit the start of service usage date
Named contact persons left unchanged after staff departures on either side
Processing location recorded at company level rather than country or facility level
No annual verification of directory content ever performed

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

SSO-02 Risk assessment of service providers and suppliers · SSO-04 Monitoring of compliance with requirements