What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on PO.2.1 Roles and Responsibilities for Secure Development?

RACI for SSDF practices; Security champion programme charter; Individual security objectives in performance management; Annual review of role definitions.

What is the most common gap auditors find on PO.2.1?

security is responsible and accountable for everything in the RACI

NIST SP 800-218 (SSDF) · Prepare the Organization

`PO.2.1` Roles and Responsibilities for Secure Development

Define and assign roles and responsibilities for secure software development across product, engineering, security, and operations. Make the responsibilities measurable so that ownership for security work is clear.

Source: NIST SP 800-218 (SSDF), PO.2.1. 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 NIST SP 800-218 (SSDF) 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

Annual review of role definitions · Identity provider / directory

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

RACI for SSDF practices · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Security champion programme charter · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Individual security objectives in performance management · 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

security is responsible and accountable for everything in the RACI
no security champions assigned in product teams
performance objectives do not reflect security work

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

PO.1.3 Communicate Requirements to Third-Party Providers · PO.2.2 Training and Skills Maintenance