What a CRA technical file actually contains
The Annex VII technical file is the evidence behind your Declaration of Conformity. Here is what goes in it, and why it cannot be backfilled.
When people say a product is CRA-compliant, what they mean concretely is that the manufacturer has a technical file and has signed a Declaration of Conformity based on it. The technical file, described in Annex VII, is the evidence pack. It is what a market surveillance authority asks to see.
What goes in it
The exact contents follow Annex VII, but in plain terms a technical file covers:
- A description of the product: what it is, what it does, and its versions.
- The cybersecurity risk assessment for the product (the Article 13 analysis).
- How the product meets each applicable essential requirement in Annex I, with evidence.
- The vulnerability-handling process: your disclosure policy, how you issue updates, and your point of contact.
- The support period, meaning how long you will provide security updates.
- Records such as a software bill of materials and the results of screening it for known vulnerabilities.
Why it cannot be backfilled
The technical file documents how you actually built and maintained the product, not how you wish you had. Secure-by-design evidence, a risk assessment that shaped decisions, and a vulnerability process with a history cannot be conjured in the last month of 2027. That is why starting early is not about beating a queue. It is that the evidence takes time to accumulate because it describes real work.
A tool that generates your Annex VII file, EU Declaration of Conformity, and user information as documents you own turns this from a blank page into a guided fill-in. That is the core of what Vandorisk does.