What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on CPS 234 para 26 Annual review and testing of response plans?

Annual exercise schedule and completed tabletop or simulation reports; Exercise participant lists including executives and, where relevant, the Board; After-action reports with improvements logged and tracked; Records of the annual plan review and resulting changes; Evidence that playbooks were tested against current plausible scenarios.

What is the most common gap auditors find on CPS 234 para 26?

Plan reviewed on paper but never exercised

APRA CPS 234 · Incident management (paras 23 to 26)

`CPS 234 para 26` Annual review and testing of response plans

Every year the entity reviews and tests its response plans so they stay effective and fit for purpose.

Source: APRA CPS 234, CPS 234 para 26. 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 234 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 exercise schedule and completed tabletop or simulation reports · Document repository
After-action reports with improvements logged and tracked · Document repository
Records of the annual plan review and resulting changes · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Evidence that playbooks were tested against current plausible scenarios · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Exercise participant lists including executives and, where relevant, the Board · Policy repository / GRC workspace

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

Plan reviewed on paper but never exercised
Same scenario exercised each year regardless of threat changes
Exercise findings not fed back into the plans

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 234 para 25 Response plan content: stages and escalation · CPS 234 para 27 Systematic testing of control effectiveness