What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on IR-5 Incident Monitoring?

SSP IR-5 statement describing the incident tracking system and fields recorded for each incident; Incident register export showing status, timeline and closure for all incidents in the period; Incident response team roster with on call rotation; Tabletop and live exercise after action reports; Incident ticket samples covering detection, containment, and lessons learned; Forensic toolkit readiness checklist and chain of custody templates.

What is the most common gap auditors find on IR-5?

Detection coverage gaps allow incidents to be discovered externally

FedRAMP High (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline) · IR - Incident Response

`IR-5` Incident Monitoring

Track and document incidents.

Source: FedRAMP High (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline), IR-5. 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 FedRAMP High (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline) in the compliance library.

A FedRAMP baseline is a subset of NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5, enhancements included.

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

Incident register export showing status, timeline and closure for all incidents in the period · Policy repository / GRC workspace

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Tabletop and live exercise after action reports · Document repository
Incident ticket samples covering detection, containment, and lessons learned · Ticketing / ITSM

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

SSP IR-5 statement describing the incident tracking system and fields recorded for each incident · Document repository
Incident response team roster with on call rotation · Document repository
Forensic toolkit readiness checklist and chain of custody templates · Document repository
Regulatory notification procedure with jurisdiction specific timelines · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Mostly documents and reviews. Pull the 1 system-held artefact from your Policy repository / GRC workspace 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

Detection coverage gaps allow incidents to be discovered externally
Severity criteria inconsistent across teams leading to under reporting
Lessons learned captured but corrective actions not tracked to closure
Notification timelines miss jurisdictional regulatory deadlines

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

IR-4(11) Incident Handling | Integrated Incident Response Team · IR-5(1) Automated Tracking, Data Collection, and Analysis