What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on RA-7 Risk Response?

SSP RA-7 statement describing how findings from assessments, scans and audits are prioritised and treated; Risk response register linking each finding to an accept, mitigate, transfer or avoid decision; Risk register with likelihood, impact, and treatment owners; Vulnerability scan reports for internal, external, and authenticated scopes; Penetration test report with retest evidence; Threat intelligence feed subscriptions and triage workflow.

What is the most common gap auditors find on RA-7?

Penetration tests scope narrow and exclude key applications

FedRAMP High (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline) · RA - Risk Assessment

`RA-7` Risk Response

Requires the organisation to respond to findings from security and privacy assessments, monitoring and audits, so identified risk is treated rather than only recorded.

Source: FedRAMP High (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline), RA-7. 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

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

Vulnerability scan reports for internal, external, and authenticated scopes · Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Risk response register linking each finding to an accept, mitigate, transfer or avoid decision · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Penetration test report with retest evidence · Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

SSP RA-7 statement describing how findings from assessments, scans and audits are prioritised and treated · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Risk register with likelihood, impact, and treatment owners · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Threat intelligence feed subscriptions and triage workflow · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Risk acceptance memos signed by accountable executives · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Mostly documents and reviews. Pull the 1 system-held artefact from your Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling 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

Penetration tests scope narrow and exclude key applications
Scan coverage gaps for containerised and ephemeral workloads
Threat intelligence consumed but not operationalised into detections
High severity vulnerabilities exceed remediation SLA without risk acceptance

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

RA-5(11) Vulnerability Monitoring and Scanning | Public Disclosure Program (RA-5(11)) · RA-9 Criticality Analysis (RA-9)