What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on SIM-05 Evaluation and learning process?

Trend statistics on incident volume and category across consecutive periods; Submissions made to national or sector support bodies; Analysis identifying repeat patterns across separate incidents; Decision records where that analysis led to new or strengthened safeguards.

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

Incident counts produced but never analysed for repetition

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

`SIM-05` Evaluation and learning process

Operate mechanisms that measure and monitor the type and volume of security incidents and report them to support bodies, then use the resulting analysis to identify recurring or significant incidents and decide where further protection is needed.

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

hard

to go live

Document repository

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

Decision records where that analysis led to new or strengthened safeguards · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Trend statistics on incident volume and category across consecutive periods · Document repository
Submissions made to national or sector support bodies · Document repository
Analysis identifying repeat patterns across separate incidents · Document repository

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

Incident counts produced but never analysed for repetition
Categorisation too coarse to reveal a recurring underlying cause
No reporting route to external support bodies established
Analysis findings never converted into protection improvements

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-04 Duty of the users to report security incidents to a central body · SP-01 Documentation, communication and provision of policies and instructions