What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 9.2.2 Internal audit programme?

The internal audit programme with frequency, methods, responsibilities, planning and reporting, weighted by process importance and prior results; Audit plans stating criteria and scope for each audit; Evidence of auditor objectivity and impartiality, such as auditors not auditing their own work; Audit reports and their distribution to relevant management.

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Clause 9

`9.2.2` Internal audit programme

The organization must plan, establish, implement and maintain one or more audit programmes that set out how often and how audits are done, who is responsible, what planning they need and how they are reported, taking into account the importance of the processes involved and the results of earlier audits. Each audit gets defined criteria and a defined scope, auditors are chosen and audits run so the process is objective and impartial, and relevant management receives the results. Documented information must be available as evidence of the programme's implementation and of audit results.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, 9.2.2. 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 ISO/IEC 27001:2022 in the compliance library.

Clauses 4 to 10 are the management-system requirements: none of them can be excluded when an organisation claims conformity. The 93 Annex A controls are a reference set: one may be excluded with a justification in the Statement of Applicability. Certification bodies assess conformity; the evidence lists here are what auditors commonly ask for, not a list the standard prescribes.

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

Evidence of auditor objectivity and impartiality, such as auditors not auditing their own work · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Audit reports and their distribution to relevant management · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

The internal audit programme with frequency, methods, responsibilities, planning and reporting, weighted by process importance and prior results · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Audit plans stating criteria and scope for each audit · 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

Auditors audit their own areas
The programme ignores previous audit findings when setting priorities
Audit criteria and scope are not stated
Results are not reported to management

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

9.2.1 Internal audit: general · 9.3.1 Management review: general