CC7.4: Responding to incidents

The company has a defined incident response process with roles, containment steps, communication and evidence handling, and follows it when an incident occurs.

Category: Security (common criteria, required in every SOC 2 report) · Series: CC7 (System operations) · TSC 2017 (2022 points of focus)

That summary is Policyseed’s own paraphrase, written to be read next to the policy sections below. The authoritative wording is the AICPA’s Trust Services Criteria, which the CPA firm tests your controls against during the examination.

Policies that address CC7.4

The Policyseed crosswalk points CC7.4 at one policy. Each link opens the full sample text at the section an auditor would read. Section 4 holds the statements management commits to; section 5 holds the procedures that produce evidence.

P13 Incident Response Policy, sections 4 (Policy Statements) and 5 (Procedures). Owner: Security Owner.

Evidence examples for CC7.4

Artifacts a company of 5 to 200 people can realistically produce. The Audit Kit’s evidence checklist lists them per policy with an owner column so each one has a name against it before the examination.

Approved Incident Response Policy with contact details and severity levels
Incident record for at least one real or tabletop incident showing detection, containment, communication and closure
Annual tabletop exercise notes with attendees, scenario and lessons learned
Customer notification template and record of any notifications sent

Related criteria in CC7 (System operations)

Previous: CC7.3 Evaluating security events. Next: CC7.5 Recovering from incidents. All 38 criteria are listed on the template index.

Policyseed provides governance policy templates and AI tailoring. It is not legal advice and not a compliance guarantee. Management adopts the policies; the CPA firm performs the SOC 2 examination.