What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on Art.9 Processing of special categories of personal data?

An inventory identifying where special category data is held, including where it is inferred rather than collected; The Article 9(2) condition recorded per activity alongside its separate Article 6 basis; The Union or Member State law relied on where the condition requires one, cited to the provision; Explicit consent records showing the consent was explicit and specific to the special category processing; Professional secrecy or equivalent confidentiality obligations evidenced for staff handling health data under point (h).

What is the most common gap auditors find on Art.9?

Special category data inferred from behaviour, purchases or free text and never recognised as in scope

GDPR · Chapter II - Principles

`Art.9` Processing of special categories of personal data

Do not process personal data revealing racial or ethnic origin, political opinions, religious or philosophical beliefs or trade union membership, nor genetic data, biometric data processed to uniquely identify a person, data concerning health, or data concerning a person's sex life or sexual orientation, unless one of the Article 9(2) conditions applies: explicit consent, employment and social security law obligations, vital interests where the data subject cannot consent, the legitimate activities of a not-for-profit body, data manifestly made public by the data subject, legal claims or courts acting judicially, substantial public interest under Union or Member State law, preventive or occupational medicine and health or social care under an obligation of professional secrecy, public health, or archiving, research and statistics under Article 89(1). The condition applies in addition to an Article 6 lawful basis, never in place of it.

Source: GDPR, Art.9. 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 GDPR in the compliance library.

Many articles apply only where their condition is met (a data protection officer under Article 37, an impact assessment under Article 35, a representative under Article 27); the condition is in each statement.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

hard

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

none for this control

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Explicit consent records showing the consent was explicit and specific to the special category processing · Data governance / DLP tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

An inventory identifying where special category data is held, including where it is inferred rather than collected · Policy repository / GRC workspace
The Article 9(2) condition recorded per activity alongside its separate Article 6 basis · Document repository
The Union or Member State law relied on where the condition requires one, cited to the provision · Document repository
Professional secrecy or equivalent confidentiality obligations evidenced for staff handling health data under point (h) · 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

Special category data inferred from behaviour, purchases or free text and never recognised as in scope
An Article 6 basis recorded with no Article 9 condition, or the two conflated into a single entry
Explicit consent asserted from the same tick box used for ordinary consent
Substantial public interest claimed without identifying the Union or Member State law that authorises it

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

Art.8 Conditions applicable to child's consent · Art.10 Processing of personal data relating to criminal convictions