What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on OPS-18 Managing Vulnerabilities, Malfunctions and Errors - Concept?

Vulnerability policy stating the severity scale and the deadline attached to each level; Documented handling route for components that cannot be remediated, including compensating controls; List of approved vulnerability information sources feeding the identification process; Risk acceptance register recording deviations from the remediation deadlines.

What is the most common gap auditors find on OPS-18?

Severity scale defined without any corresponding remediation deadline

BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) · C5: Operations

`OPS-18` Managing Vulnerabilities, Malfunctions and Errors - Concept

Publish technical and organisational rules for vulnerability handling requiring regular identification of vulnerabilities, assessment of their severity, prioritised remediation or mitigation within defined timelines, and a defined treatment for components where no timely fix will be applied.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), OPS-18. 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

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

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Vulnerability policy stating the severity scale and the deadline attached to each level · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Documented handling route for components that cannot be remediated, including compensating controls · Policy repository / GRC workspace
List of approved vulnerability information sources feeding the identification process · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Risk acceptance register recording deviations from the remediation deadlines · 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

Severity scale defined without any corresponding remediation deadline
No documented path for end of life components that will never receive a fix
Rules limited to operating systems and silent on libraries, images and firmware
Risk acceptances granted verbally, never recorded and never time limited

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

OPS-17 Logging and Monitoring - Availability of the Monitoring Software · OPS-19 Managing Vulnerabilities, Malfunctions and Errors - Penetration Tests