What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 36 System recovery capabilities (Very Good)?

Secure storage location and integrity checks, such as hashes, for the SOE images used in recovery; Standard operating environment image catalogue with version history and build dates; Rebuild procedure documenting how computers are restored to a known good state; Records of recent rebuilds or recovery exercises with time taken to restore.

What is the most common gap auditors find on 36?

SOE images outdated and missing current patches, requiring long post-restore updates

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

`36` System recovery capabilities (Very Good)

System recovery capabilities including standard operating environment images to restore computers to a known good state.

Source: ASD Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents, 36. 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

Records of recent rebuilds or recovery exercises with time taken to restore · Backup / DR tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Secure storage location and integrity checks, such as hashes, for the SOE images used in recovery · Document repository
Standard operating environment image catalogue with version history and build dates · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Rebuild procedure documenting how computers are restored to a known good state · 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

SOE images outdated and missing current patches, requiring long post-restore updates
Images stored where an attacker with admin access could tamper with them
No tested process for rebuilding servers, only workstations

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

35 Business continuity and disaster recovery plans (Very Good) · 37 Personnel management (Very Good)