What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on RS.CO-02 Internal and external stakeholders are notified of incidents?

Incident notification policy and timing matrix; Internal stakeholder communication templates; Regulator notification templates with jurisdiction matrix; Customer notification records; Notification audit trail.

What is the most common gap auditors find on RS.CO-02?

Notification timing tracked but missed

NIST CSF 2.0 · RS - Respond

`RS.CO-02` Internal and external stakeholders are notified of incidents

Internal and external stakeholders are notified of incidents. Control from NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 framework, domain: RS - Respond.

Source: NIST CSF 2.0, RS.CO-02. 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 CSF 2.0 in the compliance library.

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

Notification audit trail · SIEM / log platform

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Customer notification records · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Incident notification policy and timing matrix · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Internal stakeholder communication templates · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Regulator notification templates with jurisdiction matrix · 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

Notification timing tracked but missed
Templates generic across jurisdictions
Customer notification delayed by legal review
Audit trail incomplete

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

RS.AN-08 An incident's magnitude is estimated and validated · RS.CO-03 Information is shared with designated internal and external stakeholders