What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on CPS 230 para 42 Systematic BCP testing program with an annual exercise?

Multi-year BCP testing program showing coverage of every critical operation; Annual business continuity exercise report with date, scenario, participants and results; Test results measured against tolerance levels.

What is the most common gap auditors find on CPS 230 para 42?

Testing limited to IT DR failover with no business exercise

APRA CPS 230 · Business continuity (paras 33 to 45)

`CPS 230 para 42` Systematic BCP testing program with an annual exercise

The entity needs a systematic program of BCP testing that reaches all critical operations and includes a business continuity exercise every year. The program must test how effective the BCP is and whether the entity can meet its tolerance levels across varied severe yet plausible scenarios.

Source: APRA CPS 230, CPS 230 para 42. 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 APRA CPS 230 in the compliance library.

Applies to APRA-regulated entities.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

hard

to go live

Document repository

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

none for this control

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Annual business continuity exercise report with date, scenario, participants and results · Document repository
Test results measured against tolerance levels · Source control / CI pipeline

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Multi-year BCP testing program showing coverage of every critical operation · Document repository

First move

No system holds this evidence for you: it is people and documents. Reminders and routing to the owner still save time. Put the document under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a record with reviewer and date.

Common gaps auditors find

Testing limited to IT DR failover with no business exercise
Some critical operations never tested in the cycle

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

CPS 230 para 41 Notify APRA within 24 hours of a disruption outside tolerance · CPS 230 para 43 Tailored test scenarios including material service provider disruption