What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 35 Business continuity and disaster recovery plans (Very Good)?

Offline or printed copies of the recovery plan and contact lists usable when all computing is lost; Approved business continuity and disaster recovery plans with recovery time and point objectives; Exercise reports including a scenario of complete loss of computing capability; Post-exercise action lists and plan updates made in response.

What is the most common gap auditors find on 35?

Plans assume IT systems are available to coordinate recovery during an outage

ASD Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents · Recovering Data and System Availability

`35` Business continuity and disaster recovery plans (Very Good)

Business continuity and disaster recovery plans which are tested, including for the scenario of a complete loss of computing capabilities.

Source: ASD Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents, 35. 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 ASD Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents in the compliance library.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

hard

to go live

Policy repository / GRC workspace

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

Exercise reports including a scenario of complete loss of computing capability · Document repository
Post-exercise action lists and plan updates made in response · Policy repository / GRC workspace

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Offline or printed copies of the recovery plan and contact lists usable when all computing is lost · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Approved business continuity and disaster recovery plans with recovery time and point objectives · 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

Plans assume IT systems are available to coordinate recovery during an outage
Plans not tested for a total loss scenario such as destructive ransomware
Contact lists and procedures out of date after staff and system changes

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

34 Regular backups (Essential) · 36 System recovery capabilities (Very Good)