What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on DCS-05 Secure Media Transportation Policy and Procedures?

Secure media transport procedure covering packaging, encryption, couriers and tamper-evident seals; Approved courier list and contracts with security obligations; Media transport logs with sign-out, sign-in and seal numbers; Records of encryption applied to backup tapes or drives before shipment; Review history of the procedure.

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

Backup media shipped unencrypted with a general courier

CSA CCM v4.1 · DCS - Datacenter Security

`DCS-05` Secure Media Transportation Policy and Procedures

Policies and procedures govern how physical media are moved securely from one place to another. They are revisited every year, and sooner if something significant changes.

Source: CSA CCM v4.1, DCS-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 CSA CCM v4.1 in the compliance library.

Version 4.1 adds 11 controls (among them API security, log sanitisation and a service bill of materials) and renumbers several domains. CSA accepts v4.0.x during its transition; if your STAR assessment is still on v4.0.1, check the numbering against it.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

moderate

to go live

SIEM / log platform

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

Media transport logs with sign-out, sign-in and seal numbers · SIEM / log platform
Review history of the procedure · Data governance / DLP tooling

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Records of encryption applied to backup tapes or drives before shipment · Backup / DR tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Secure media transport procedure covering packaging, encryption, couriers and tamper-evident seals · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Approved courier list and contracts with security obligations · Vendor register / contract repository

First move

Start with the 2 of 5 artefacts that already live in a system (SIEM / log platform); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Backup media shipped unencrypted with a general courier
No reconciliation of media sent against media received
Procedure exists but was not updated after switching to a new media vendor

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

DCS-04 Secure Area Policy and Procedures · DCS-06 Assets Classification