What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on SEF-07 Incident Management and Response?

Incident classification scheme with categories and severity levels and the response expected for each; Playbooks per incident type, for example ransomware, credential compromise and data exposure; Escalation paths and role assignments, with copies stored where responders can reach them during an outage; Incident records showing the response followed the playbook for the assigned category and severity; Annual review and test record for the response procedures, with changes made.

What is the most common gap auditors find on SEF-07?

One generic response procedure used for every incident regardless of severity

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

`SEF-07` Incident Management and Response

The organisation sets up, operates and evaluates processes, procedures and technical measures that let it respond to security incidents quickly and effectively according to how each incident is categorised and how severe it is. Those processes and procedures are reviewed, refreshed and tested every year at minimum.

Source: CSA CCM v4.1, SEF-07. 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

Incident records showing the response followed the playbook for the assigned category and severity · Document repository

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Annual review and test record for the response procedures, with changes made · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Incident classification scheme with categories and severity levels and the response expected for each · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Playbooks per incident type, for example ransomware, credential compromise and data exposure · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Escalation paths and role assignments, with copies stored where responders can reach them during an outage · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Mostly documents and reviews. Pull the 1 system-held artefact from your Document repository 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

One generic response procedure used for every incident regardless of severity
Playbooks held only on systems that may be unavailable during the incident
No annual test, so playbooks drift from the current environment

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-06 Event Triage Processes · SEF-08 Security Breach Notification