What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on PSS-05 Authentication Mechanisms?

Configuration evidence that multi factor authentication can be enforced per tenant; Inventory of access points including APIs and legacy endpoints with their authentication settings; Policy setting showing enforcement applied to privileged accounts; Test result demonstrating rejection of a single factor privileged login.

What is the most common gap auditors find on PSS-05?

Strong authentication offered on the web console but not for API or command line access

BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) · C5: Product Safety and Security

`PSS-05` Authentication Mechanisms

Offer authentication mechanisms able to force strong multi factor authentication for the customers' users, IT components and applications, deploy them at every access point that interacts with the service, and make their use mandatory for privileged users, components and applications.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), PSS-05. 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

easy

to go live

Identity provider / directory

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

Configuration evidence that multi factor authentication can be enforced per tenant · Identity provider / directory
Inventory of access points including APIs and legacy endpoints with their authentication settings · Endpoint management (MDM / EDR)
Policy setting showing enforcement applied to privileged accounts · Identity provider / directory

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Test result demonstrating rejection of a single factor privileged login · Identity provider / directory

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

none for this control

First move

Automate the pull from your Identity provider / directory. Scheduled export of users, roles and MFA state from the directory; access-review completion pulled from the IdP, not a spreadsheet.

Common gaps auditors find

Strong authentication offered on the web console but not for API or command line access
Multi factor available as an option yet not enforceable for privileged roles
Break glass accounts permanently exempted from the requirement
Machine and application identities left on static long lived credentials

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

PSS-04 Error handling and Logging Mechanisms · PSS-06 Session Management