What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.8.25 Secure development life cycle?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.25, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; Documented secure development rules or SDLC standard covering environments, methodology, coding guidelines, security requirements, checkpoints, testing, repositories and version control; Secure coding guidelines for each language in use; Project records showing security checkpoints or gates passed; Security testing outputs such as static analysis, regression and penetration test results.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.8.25?

The SDLC standard exists but projects skip the security gates under schedule pressure

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Technological controls

`A.8.25` Secure development life cycle

The organization is to set and apply rules for developing software and systems securely. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): builds security into software and systems from design through implementation. 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 8.25.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.8.25. 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

Project records showing security checkpoints or gates passed · Document repository
Security testing outputs such as static analysis, regression and penetration test results · Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.25, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Documented secure development rules or SDLC standard covering environments, methodology, coding guidelines, security requirements, checkpoints, testing, repositories and version control · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Secure coding guidelines for each language in use · 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

The SDLC standard exists but projects skip the security gates under schedule pressure
Coding guidelines cover only one language while several are used
Low-code, scripting and spreadsheet development fall outside the rules
Outsourced development is accepted without any evidence of secure practices

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.8.24 Use of cryptography · A.8.26 Application security requirements