What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.8.13 Information backup?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.13, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; The topic-specific backup policy and backup plans stating scope, extent, frequency and retention per system aligned with RPO; Backup job monitoring reports with evidence that failed jobs were investigated and rerun; Restore test records onto test systems, checked against the recovery time in the continuity plan; Evidence of off-site or geographically separate backup storage with suitable physical protection.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.8.13?

Backups run but full system restores have never been tested

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Technological controls

`A.8.13` Information backup

Backups of information, software and systems are to be kept and tested regularly as the agreed topic-specific backup policy requires. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): makes it possible to recover lost data or systems. 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 8.13.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.8.13. 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

moderate

to go live

Backup / DR tooling

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

Backup job monitoring reports with evidence that failed jobs were investigated and rerun · Backup / DR tooling
Evidence of off-site or geographically separate backup storage with suitable physical protection · Backup / DR tooling

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.13, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
The topic-specific backup policy and backup plans stating scope, extent, frequency and retention per system aligned with RPO · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Restore test records onto test systems, checked against the recovery time in the continuity plan · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Start with the 2 of 5 artefacts that already live in a system (Backup / DR tooling); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Backups run but full system restores have never been tested
Backups are stored in the same site or cloud region as production
Cloud SaaS data is assumed to be backed up by the provider
Backup failures are logged but not followed up, leaving gaps

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.8.12 Data leakage prevention · A.8.14 Redundancy of information processing facilities