What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on OPS-19 Managing Vulnerabilities, Malfunctions and Errors - Penetration Tests?

Penetration test report with scope statement, methodology and dated findings; Risk analysis that determined which components were placed in scope; Qualification or certification records for the testers used; Remediation tracker showing closure dates against the agreed time windows.

What is the most common gap auditors find on OPS-19?

Scope narrowed to a public marketing site while the service planes go untested

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

`OPS-19` Managing Vulnerabilities, Malfunctions and Errors - Penetration Tests

Commission penetration tests at least annually by qualified internal personnel or external providers, following a documented test methodology across the components identified as relevant in a risk analysis, rating findings against defined criteria and remediating medium and high criticality findings within set time windows.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), OPS-19. 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

Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling

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

Penetration test report with scope statement, methodology and dated findings · Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling
Risk analysis that determined which components were placed in scope · Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling
Qualification or certification records for the testers used · Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Remediation tracker showing closure dates against the agreed time windows · 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

Scope narrowed to a public marketing site while the service planes go untested
Findings rated by the tester and then quietly downgraded internally without justification
No retest performed to confirm that reported findings were actually closed
The team that builds the platform also tests it, with no independence

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-18 Managing Vulnerabilities, Malfunctions and Errors - Concept · OPS-20 Managing Vulnerabilities, Malfunctions and Errors - Measurements, Analyses and Assessments of Procedures