What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.7.14 Secure disposal or re-use of equipment?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.7.14, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; A disposal and reuse procedure requiring verification that equipment is checked for storage media and sanitized; Sanitization or destruction certificates identifying each device, method used and verifier; Evidence that sanitization tools were validated for the media technology (for example SSD versus HDD); Records showing organizational labels and classification markings removed before resale or donation.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.7.14?

Devices are resold or donated after a standard format only

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Physical controls

`A.7.14` Secure disposal or re-use of equipment

Before equipment containing storage media is disposed of or reused, it is to be checked to confirm that sensitive data and licensed software have been removed or securely overwritten. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): prevents leakage of information from equipment that is disposed of or reused. As an Annex A reference control, it is compared with the controls determined in risk treatment (6.1.3 c) and recorded in the Statement of Applicability as included or excluded, with the justification and implementation status (6.1.3 d); implementation guidance is ISO/IEC 27002:2022 7.14.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.7.14. 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 that sanitization tools were validated for the media technology (for example SSD versus HDD) · Physical access / facilities
Records showing organizational labels and classification markings removed before resale or donation · Physical access / facilities

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.7.14, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
A disposal and reuse procedure requiring verification that equipment is checked for storage media and sanitized · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Sanitization or destruction certificates identifying each device, method used and verifier · 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

Devices are resold or donated after a standard format only
SSDs are wiped with tools designed for spinning disks
Printers, copiers and network devices with internal storage are overlooked
Access control systems with user lists are left behind at the end of a lease

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

A.7.13 Equipment maintenance · A.8.1 User end point devices