What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on SEF-05 Incident Response Metrics?

Defined incident metric set, for example mean time to detect, contain and resolve and counts by severity; Dashboard or monthly incident metrics report; Distribution list or meeting minutes showing metrics presented to management; Trend analysis comparing periods and noting improvement actions.

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

Metrics collected but never reported beyond the security team

CSA CCM v4.1 · SEF - Security Incident Management, E-Discovery, & Cloud Forensics

`SEF-05` Incident Response Metrics

The organisation defines measures for its information security incidents, tracks them over time and reports the results to the people who need them.

Source: CSA CCM v4.1, SEF-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

Cloud console / configuration management

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

Dashboard or monthly incident metrics report · Cloud console / configuration management

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Distribution list or meeting minutes showing metrics presented to management · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Defined incident metric set, for example mean time to detect, contain and resolve and counts by severity · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Trend analysis comparing periods and noting improvement actions · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

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

Common gaps auditors find

Metrics collected but never reported beyond the security team
Metrics count tickets only and say nothing about response effectiveness
Definitions change between periods so trends cannot be compared

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

SEF-04 Incident Response Testing · SEF-06 Event Triage Processes