What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on PSS-06 Session Management?

Design documentation for session token generation, storage and invalidation; Configuration showing the inactivity timeout value and who may change it; Test evidence that a token is refused after logout or timeout; Assessment against known session attacks such as fixation and replay.

What is the most common gap auditors find on PSS-06?

Session appears closed in the interface while the underlying token stays valid

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

`PSS-06` Session Management

Protect interactions with the service using session management that meets at least the current state of the art and withstands known attacks, and invalidate a session once detected as inactive using a timeout configurable by the provider or, where technically possible, by the customer.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), PSS-06. 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

Cloud console / configuration management

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 showing the inactivity timeout value and who may change it · Cloud console / configuration management

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Test evidence that a token is refused after logout or timeout · Document repository
Assessment against known session attacks such as fixation and replay · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Design documentation for session token generation, storage and invalidation · Document repository

First move

Start with the 1 of 4 artefacts that already live in a system (Cloud console / configuration management); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Session appears closed in the interface while the underlying token stays valid
Inactivity timeout set so long that it never triggers in practice
Tokens not reissued after a privilege elevation
Customers unable to adjust the timeout although the platform supports it

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-05 Authentication Mechanisms · PSS-07 Confidentiality of Authentication Information