What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on BCM-04 Verification, updating and testing of the business continuity?

Test schedule and completed test reports covering the past twelve months; Evidence that affected tenants and relevant third parties took part in a test; Change log showing plans updated after an organisational or environmental change; Follow up actions raised from test findings with their closure status.

What is the most common gap auditors find on BCM-04?

Testing limited to desk walkthroughs with no technical recovery attempted

BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) · C5: Business Continuity Management

`BCM-04` Verification, updating and testing of the business continuity

Review, update and test the impact analysis and the continuity and contingency plans at least annually and after significant organisational or environmental change, involving affected tenants and relevant third parties, documenting the tests and applying results to later continuity measures.

Source: BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue), BCM-04. 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 BSI C5 (121-criteria catalogue) in the compliance library.

The edition of the catalogue is not stamped here; check the edition your attestation is issued against.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

moderate

to go live

SIEM / log platform

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

Change log showing plans updated after an organisational or environmental change · SIEM / log platform

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Test schedule and completed test reports covering the past twelve months · Document repository
Evidence that affected tenants and relevant third parties took part in a test · Vendor register / contract repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Follow up actions raised from test findings with their closure status · Document repository

First move

Start with the 1 of 4 artefacts that already live in a system (SIEM / log platform); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Testing limited to desk walkthroughs with no technical recovery attempted
Customers and suppliers never involved, so external dependencies stay untested
Plans reviewed annually but not refreshed after a major platform change
Test findings written up but never actioned

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

BCM-03 Planning business continuity · COM-01 Identification of applicable legal, regulatory, self-imposed or contractual requirements