What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on DCS-06 Assets Classification?

Asset classification scheme tied to business risk criteria; Asset inventory extract showing a classification value on each physical and logical asset; Sample of applications and hardware with their assigned classification and owner sign-off; Records of the annual classification review and of reclassification after major change; Asset labelling or tagging records reflecting the classification.

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

Logical assets such as applications and data stores missing from the classification

CSA CCM v4.1 · DCS - Datacenter Security

`DCS-06` Assets Classification

Physical and logical assets, applications included, are classified according to the business risk they carry and that classification is recorded. The classification is revisited every year, and sooner after a significant change.

Source: CSA CCM v4.1, DCS-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 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

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

Asset inventory extract showing a classification value on each physical and logical asset · Physical access / facilities

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Sample of applications and hardware with their assigned classification and owner sign-off · Data governance / DLP tooling
Records of the annual classification review and of reclassification after major change · Data governance / DLP tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Asset classification scheme tied to business risk criteria · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Asset labelling or tagging records reflecting the classification · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Mostly documents and reviews. Pull the 1 system-held artefact from your Physical access / facilities on a schedule; put the documents under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Logical assets such as applications and data stores missing from the classification
Classification set once at onboarding and never revisited
Criteria are not linked to business risk, so every asset is rated the same

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-05 Secure Media Transportation Policy and Procedures · DCS-07 Assets Cataloguing and Tracking