What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on SIM-02 Processing of security incidents?

Ticket records showing triage decisions and assigned priority for suspected incidents; Root cause analysis write ups for a sample of closed incidents; Skills or qualification records for the analysts performing triage; Engagement terms with any external security provider assisting analysis.

What is the most common gap auditors find on SIM-02?

Tickets closed as resolved with no cause identified beyond the symptom

BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) · C5: Security Incident Management

`SIM-02` Processing of security incidents

Have qualified internal specialists, drawing on external security providers where useful, triage each event that might be a security incident by classifying it, assigning priority and carrying out a root cause analysis.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), SIM-02. 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

Ticketing / ITSM

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

Ticket records showing triage decisions and assigned priority for suspected incidents · Ticketing / ITSM

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Skills or qualification records for the analysts performing triage · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Root cause analysis write ups for a sample of closed incidents · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Engagement terms with any external security provider assisting analysis · Document repository

First move

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

Common gaps auditors find

Tickets closed as resolved with no cause identified beyond the symptom
Priority assigned by the reporter and never reviewed by an analyst
Events dismissed as false positives with no analysis recorded
External specialist help arranged only mid incident, with no standing agreement

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

SIM-01 Policy for security incident management · SIM-03 Documentation and reporting of security incidents