What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on PSS-09 Authorisation Mechanisms?

Test cases and results validating authorisation checks before a feature release; Regression evidence covering authorisation after a change to an existing function; Severity ratings applied to authorisation defects using a standard scoring metric; Entries in the public vulnerability listing for unresolved authorisation flaws.

What is the most common gap auditors find on PSS-09?

Authorisation enforced in the user interface but not at the service endpoint

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

`PSS-09` Authorisation Mechanisms

Restrict service functions behind authorisation checks confirming that a user, IT component or application may perform the action, validate those checks before releasing new functions or changing existing ones, rate defects against an industry metric, remediate promptly and list unfixed ones publicly.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), PSS-09. 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

Regression evidence covering authorisation after a change to an existing function · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Test cases and results validating authorisation checks before a feature release · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Severity ratings applied to authorisation defects using a standard scoring metric · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Entries in the public vulnerability listing for unresolved authorisation flaws · 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

Authorisation enforced in the user interface but not at the service endpoint
New features shipped without an authorisation specific test case
Defects fixed quietly and never disclosed in the published listing
Object level checks missing, so substituting an identifier reaches another tenant's data

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-08 Roles and Rights Concept · PSS-10 Software Defined Networking