What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 8.5 Exercise programme?

Exercise programme showing scope, scenario and interval coverage over time; Exercise aims and objectives defined before each exercise; Formal post exercise reports with outcomes, recommendations and actions; Action tracking to closure with evidence of the resulting change; Coverage analysis showing the programme validates every strategy and solution over its cycle.

What is the most common gap auditors find on 8.5?

The same comfortable scenario rehearsed annually, so rare failure modes are never stressed

ISO 22301:2019 · Operation, ISO 22301:2019

`8.5` Exercise programme

Put in place and keep up a programme of exercises and tests that shows, over time, that the continuity strategies and solutions work. The exercises and tests must: fit the continuity objectives; rest on carefully planned scenarios with clearly stated aims; build teamwork, competence, confidence and knowledge among those who have roles in the response; together, over time, confirm the strategies and solutions; lead to formal reports after each exercise setting out outcomes, recommendations and improvement actions; be reviewed with continual improvement in mind; and take place at planned intervals and whenever significant change happens. Act on what they show by making changes and improvements.

Source: ISO 22301:2019, 8.5. 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 ISO 22301:2019 in the compliance library.

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

Exercise aims and objectives defined before each exercise · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Formal post exercise reports with outcomes, recommendations and actions · Document repository
Action tracking to closure with evidence of the resulting change · Document repository
Coverage analysis showing the programme validates every strategy and solution over its cycle · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Exercise programme showing scope, scenario and interval coverage over time · 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

The same comfortable scenario rehearsed annually, so rare failure modes are never stressed
Exercises run without defined aims, so they cannot pass or fail
Post exercise findings recorded and never actioned
Programme covers ICT recovery only, leaving people, premises and supplier scenarios untested
No coverage analysis, so gaps in what has been validated go unnoticed

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

8.4.5 Recovery · 8.6 Evaluation of business continuity documentation and capabilities