What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.1.4.7 Temporary files?

Documented procedure naming the temporary file locations and the retention period for each; Automated or scheduled cleanup with execution evidence; Periodic verification that unused temporary files were in fact removed; Inventory of temporary artefacts including rollback journals, caches, spool files and interim exports.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.1.4.7?

Temporary files unconsidered entirely, so the longest lived copy of personal data is one nobody knows about

ISO/IEC 27701:2025 · Annex A Table A.1 PIMS controls for PII controllers

`A.1.4.7` Temporary files

The organization must make sure that temporary files produced while processing personal data are wiped or destroyed within a documented time limit, under documented procedures, and must check regularly that temporary files no longer in use have been removed within that limit. It should recognise that such files include rollback journals and files generated by database updates and by applications running; that they serve no purpose once the task that created them is finished, though some cannot be removed straight away; and that their lifespan is not always predictable, so a clean-up procedure should find them and establish how long ago each was last used.

Source: ISO/IEC 27701:2025, A.1.4.7. 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 27701:2025 in the compliance library.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

moderate

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

Inventory of temporary artefacts including rollback journals, caches, spool files and interim exports · Policy repository / GRC workspace

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Automated or scheduled cleanup with execution evidence · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Documented procedure naming the temporary file locations and the retention period for each · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Periodic verification that unused temporary files were in fact removed · Document repository

First move

Start with the 1 of 4 artefacts that already live in a system (Policy repository / GRC workspace); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Temporary files unconsidered entirely, so the longest lived copy of personal data is one nobody knows about
Procedure covering the application's own temporary directory while database, queue and export staging areas go unmanaged
Cleanup scheduled and silently failing, with no verification to catch it
Period specified for deletion but not the check that deletion occurred
Interim files created by analytics and reporting excluded because they are not seen as processing

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.1.4.6 PII de-identification and deletion at the end of processing · A.1.4.8 Retention