BSI C5:2020 COM-03 — Internal audits of the information security management system

What this control requires

Conducts annual ISMS audits per COM-01 and SP-01, assessing compliance with requirements. Mitigates vulnerabilities per OIS-06 and OPS-18, ensuring robust security controls to protect cloud customer data and maintain ISMS effectiveness.

In plain English

Conducts annual ISMS audits per COM-01 and SP-01, assessing compliance with requirements. In practice, this means you can prove you information - configuration-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

BSI C5 is the default cloud-security baseline German public-sector buyers and many DAX-listed enterprises expect; gaps here directly block procurement in the DACH region and frequently appear as must-have items in EU public-tender documents.

This control is rated high. Auditors expect a named owner, a remediation SLA, and a tooling artefact that evidences continuous operation.

What an auditor looks for

A C5 attesting auditor (under ISAE 3000 / IDW PS 860) tests both the design and — for a Type 2 — the operating effectiveness over the attestation period. For each criterion they look for both the Basic and any in-scope Additional objectives.

Within Compliance Management, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Criterion COM-03) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Cloud Posture

CSPM. Run Wiz / Prisma / Defender for Cloud / Security Command Center over every account; auto-ticket findings above your accepted-risk threshold.

Configuration Management

Policy-as-code. Codify the control as Service Control Policies (AWS), Azure Policy initiatives, or Organisation Policy (GCP) so the platform enforces what the document promises.

IaC. Gate Terraform / Pulumi / CloudFormation changes with Checkov / tfsec / OPA so misconfigurations never reach production.

Drift. Run a CSPM (Wiz / Prisma / Defender for Cloud / Security Command Center) over every account and route findings to a single risk register.

Network Security

AWS. VPC Flow Logs to S3, default-deny security groups, AWS Network Firewall for north-south, and Transit Gateway for hub-and-spoke segmentation.

Azure. NSGs with deny-by-default, Azure Firewall Premium with TLS inspection, Private Endpoints for PaaS, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud's secure score for drift.

GCP. VPC Service Controls perimeters around sensitive APIs, Cloud NGFW Enterprise for L7 inspection, Private Service Connect for managed services.

Operational checklist

• Information. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Risk. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Security. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Data. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Internal. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: - configuration, cloud customer data, management.

Evidence to collect

• Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

Infrastructure posture tooling (AWS Config, Azure Policy, Nessus) verifies platform hardening. Focus: Internal audits of the information security management system.

Common pitfalls

• Treating CSPM findings as a backlog instead of a hot queue: findings older than the policy SLA accumulate until the auditor asks why.
• Manual cloud-console changes that never make it back to Terraform — drift accumulates until the next outage forces a reconciliation.
• Default-allow egress rules; East-West traffic with no segmentation; jump hosts on the public internet with password auth.
• Scans that hit only the perimeter; missing authenticated scans of OS, runtime libs and base images so most CVEs are invisible.

How it maps to other frameworks

Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.

• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.4.6 — Least Functionality
• GDPR Article 25 — Data protection by design and by default
• NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 CM-6(2) — Respond To Unauthorized Changes
• CIS Controls v8 3.9 — Encrypt Data on Removable Media
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.34 — Privacy and protection of personal identifiable information (PII)

Related controls in BSI C5:2020

• Criterion COM-04 — Information on information security performance and management assessment of the ISMS
• Criterion INQ-01 — Legal Assessment of Investigative Inquiries
• Criterion DEV-05 — Risk assessment, categorisation and prioritisation of changes
• Criterion PSS-10 — Software Defined Networking
• Criterion COS-04 — Cross-network access
• Criterion OPS-23 — Managing Vulnerabilities, Malfunctions and Errors - System Hardening

References

• Bundesamt für Sicherheit in der Informationstechnik (BSI) — BSI C5:2020
• Catalogue identifier: Criterion COM-03

Topics: governance riskcloud infrastructurecloud postureconfiguration managementnetwork securityvulnerability management