What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on AM-03 Commissioning of Hardware?

Signed commissioning approvals for hardware recently placed into production service; Pre release configuration verification checklist naming the tester and recording each result; Risk analysis produced for the introduction of a new hardware type or model; Build or imaging standard applied to the device before handover to operations.

What is the most common gap auditors find on AM-03?

Equipment racked and cabled into production while the approval is completed retrospectively

BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) · C5: Asset Management

`AM-03` Commissioning of Hardware

Approve hardware before it enters the production environment through a process that identifies, analyses and mitigates the risks its introduction creates, granting approval only after verifying that error handling, logging, encryption, authentication and authorisation are securely configured for the intended use.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), AM-03. 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 BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) in the compliance library.

The edition of the catalogue is not stamped here; check the edition your attestation is issued against.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

moderate

to go live

Source control / CI pipeline

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

Pre release configuration verification checklist naming the tester and recording each result · Source control / CI pipeline

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Signed commissioning approvals for hardware recently placed into production service · Document repository
Risk analysis produced for the introduction of a new hardware type or model · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Build or imaging standard applied to the device before handover to operations · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Start with the 1 of 4 artefacts that already live in a system (Source control / CI pipeline); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Equipment racked and cabled into production while the approval is completed retrospectively
Verification limited to a functional test, leaving security settings unchecked
Urgent capacity additions routed around the approval process entirely
Approval signed by the requesting engineer with no independent verification

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

AM-02 Acceptable Use and Safe Handling of Assets Policy · AM-04 Decommissioning of Hardware