What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on CP-4(1) Contingency Plan Testing | Coordinate with Related Plans?

Contingency planning policy; Incident response policy; Procedures addressing contingency plan testing; Contingency plan testing documentation; Contingency plan; Business continuity plans.

What is the most common gap auditors find on CP-4(1)?

Contingency plan testing is run in isolation without involving owners of related plans such as incident response or continuity

NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 · CP - Contingency Planning

`CP-4(1)` Contingency Plan Testing | Coordinate with Related Plans

Coordinate contingency plan testing with organizational elements responsible for related plans.

Source: NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5, CP-4(1). 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 NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 in the compliance library.

Base controls and their enhancements. Which apply follows the baseline you are assessed against (for example FedRAMP Moderate or High, or the low, moderate and high baselines of SP 800-53B). Text in square brackets is a parameter your organisation sets.

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

none for this control

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Contingency planning policy · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Incident response policy · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Procedures addressing contingency plan testing · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Contingency plan testing documentation · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Contingency plan · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Business continuity plans · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Disaster recovery plans · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Continuity of operations plans · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Crisis communications plans · 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

Contingency plan testing is run in isolation without involving owners of related plans such as incident response or continuity
No record shows related plan owners reviewed test scenarios or results for dependencies between 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

CP-4 Contingency Plan Testing · CP-4(2) Contingency Plan Testing | Alternate Processing Site