What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.3.15 Independent review of information security?

Independent audit or certification reports offered to customers; Contract terms describing the assurance route in place of customer audits; Evidence the audit scope covers the processing the customer relies on.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.3.15?

Assurance report whose scope excludes the systems that process the customer's PII

ISO/IEC 27701:2025 · Annex A Table A.3 information security controls with PII-specific guidance

`A.3.15` Independent review of information security

Where the organization acts as a PII processor and audits by each customer are not practical or would raise security risk, it shall give customers, both before a contract is signed and throughout it, independent evidence that its information security is put into practice and run as its policies and procedures say. An independent audit chosen by the organization will usually satisfy a customer's wish to examine the processing, as long as its scope meets what the expected users need and its findings are shared with enough openness.

Source: ISO/IEC 27701:2025, A.3.15. 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

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 the audit scope covers the processing the customer relies on · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Independent audit or certification reports offered to customers · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Contract terms describing the assurance route in place of customer audits · Vendor register / contract 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

Assurance report whose scope excludes the systems that process the customer's PII
Report withheld until after contract signature

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.3.14 Protection of records · A.3.16 Compliance with policies, rules and standards for information security