What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on CP-2 Contingency Plan?

SSP CP-2 statement describing the contingency plan contents, roles, the annual update and coordination with incident response and BCP; Contingency plan with the annual review record and distribution list of key contacts; Annual tabletop and full failover test reports; Alternate processing site contract and capacity attestation; Restoration test logs with success criteria signed off; Business impact analysis identifying critical systems.

What is the most common gap auditors find on CP-2?

Backups taken but restore tests never performed end to end

FedRAMP Moderate (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline) · CP - Contingency Planning

`CP-2` Contingency Plan

Develop contingency plan; review and update annually (FedRAMP); coordinate with related plans.

Source: FedRAMP Moderate (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline), CP-2. 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 FedRAMP Moderate (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline) in the compliance library.

A FedRAMP baseline is a subset of NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5, enhancements included.

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

Restoration test logs with success criteria signed off · Backup / DR tooling

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Annual tabletop and full failover test reports · Backup / DR tooling
Alternate processing site contract and capacity attestation · Vendor register / contract repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

SSP CP-2 statement describing the contingency plan contents, roles, the annual update and coordination with incident response and BCP · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Contingency plan with the annual review record and distribution list of key contacts · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Business impact analysis identifying critical systems · Document repository

First move

Mostly documents and reviews. Pull the 1 system-held artefact from your Backup / DR tooling on a schedule; put the documents under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Backups taken but restore tests never performed end to end
RTO and RPO targets undefined for tier two systems
Tabletop exercises lack participation from business owners

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

CP-1 Policy and Procedures · CP-2(1) Coordinate with Related Plans