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

Incident response policy; Procedures addressing incident monitoring; Incident response records and documentation; Incident response plan; System security plan; Privacy plan.

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

Incidents are handled but not tracked in a record showing status, actions taken and closure

NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 · IR - Incident Response

`IR-5` Incident Monitoring

Track and document incidents.

Source: NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5, 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 NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 in the compliance library.

Base controls and their enhancements. Which apply follows the baseline you are assessed against (for example FedRAMP Moderate or High, or the low, moderate and high baselines of SP 800-53B). Text in square brackets is a parameter your organisation sets.

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

Test of Incident monitoring capability for the organization; mechanisms supporting and/or implementing the tracking and documenting of system security incidents · SIEM / log platform

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Incident response policy · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Procedures addressing incident monitoring · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Incident response records and documentation · Document repository
Incident response plan · Policy repository / GRC workspace
System security plan · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Privacy plan · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Mostly documents and reviews. Pull the 1 system-held artefact from your SIEM / log platform 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

Incidents are handled but not tracked in a record showing status, actions taken and closure
Incident records lack documentation of attack details, affected systems and response actions

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(15) Incident Handling | Public Relations and Reputation Repair · IR-5(1) Incident Monitoring | Automated Tracking, Data Collection, and Analysis