A.8.10 Information deletion
Information held in systems, devices or any other storage media is to be deleted once it is no longer needed. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): prevents unnecessary exposure of sensitive information and meets legal and contractual deletion requirements. 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 8.10.
Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.8.10. 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.
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
- Configuration of automated deletion after retention periods or on data subject requests · Cloud console / configuration management
periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review
- Deletion logs or certificates as evidence, including from deletion service providers · SIEM / log platform
governing documentDocuments that govern the control
- Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.10, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- The data retention topic-specific policy with deletion triggers per information type · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- Approved secure deletion tools and methods matched to media type (overwriting, cryptographic erasure, degaussing) · Policy repository / GRC workspace
First move
Common gaps auditors find
- Information is deleted from the primary system but copies remain in backups, exports and temporary files
- No evidence of deletion is kept, so completion cannot be demonstrated
- Cloud providers' deletion methods are accepted without assessment
- Devices go back to vendors under warranty with drives still installed
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.
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