What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on RS.MA-03 Incidents are categorized and prioritized?

Incident categorization taxonomy; Severity scoring rubric; Incident ticket evidence showing categories and severity; Periodic review of taxonomy completeness; Reporting metrics by category and severity.

What is the most common gap auditors find on RS.MA-03?

Taxonomy stale relative to current threats

NIST CSF 2.0 · RS - Respond

`RS.MA-03` Incidents are categorized and prioritized

Incidents are categorized and prioritized. Control from NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 framework, domain: RS - Respond.

Source: NIST CSF 2.0, RS.MA-03. 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

moderate

to go live

Ticketing / ITSM

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 ticket evidence showing categories and severity · Ticketing / ITSM
Reporting metrics by category and severity · Policy repository / GRC workspace

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Periodic review of taxonomy completeness · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Incident categorization taxonomy · Document repository
Severity scoring rubric · Document repository

First move

Start with the 2 of 5 artefacts that already live in a system (Ticketing / ITSM); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Taxonomy stale relative to current threats
Severity downgraded informally
Tickets miss category assignment
Metrics not used for trend analysis

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.MA-02 Incident reports are triaged and validated · RS.MA-04 Incidents are escalated or elevated as needed