What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.5.30 ICT readiness for business continuity?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.30, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; The business impact analysis with prioritized activities, supporting ICT services and their RTOs, and RPOs for required information; Selected ICT continuity strategies covering before, during and after disruption; Management-approved ICT continuity plans with response and recovery procedures, capacity specifications, RTOs and RPOs; Exercise and test reports showing recovery achieved within RTO and RPO, with remediation of shortfalls.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.5.30?

RTOs and RPOs are set by IT without a business impact analysis

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Organizational controls

`A.5.30` ICT readiness for business continuity

ICT readiness is to be planned, put in place, kept current and tested so that it meets the continuity objectives of the business and the requirements for ICT continuity. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): ensures information and associated assets remain available during disruption. As an Annex A reference control, it is compared with the controls determined in risk treatment (6.1.3 c) and recorded in the Statement of Applicability as included or excluded, with the justification and implementation status (6.1.3 d); implementation guidance is ISO/IEC 27002:2022 5.30.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.5.30. 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/IEC 27001:2022 in the compliance library.

Clauses 4 to 10 are the management-system requirements: none of them can be excluded when an organisation claims conformity. The 93 Annex A controls are a reference set: one may be excluded with a justification in the Statement of Applicability. Certification bodies assess conformity; the evidence lists here are what auditors commonly ask for, not a list the standard prescribes.

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

The business impact analysis with prioritized activities, supporting ICT services and their RTOs, and RPOs for required information · Document repository
Exercise and test reports showing recovery achieved within RTO and RPO, with remediation of shortfalls · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.5.30, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Selected ICT continuity strategies covering before, during and after disruption · Document repository
Management-approved ICT continuity plans with response and recovery procedures, capacity specifications, RTOs and RPOs · 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

RTOs and RPOs are set by IT without a business impact analysis
Plans are approved but recovery has never been tested end to end
Recovery capacity specifications do not match what prioritized activities actually need
Cloud and third-party ICT services are left out of the continuity plans

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

A.5.29 Information security during disruption · A.5.31 Legal, statutory, regulatory and contractual requirements