Assessing the Priority of Systems Covered in an Organization's Business Continuity Plan

D.

When assessing the priority given to systems covered in an organization's business continuity plan (BCP), an IS auditor should follow a structured approach to ensure that the organization's critical business functions can continue in the event of a disaster.

The FIRST step an IS auditor should take is to review the results of previous business continuity plan (BCP) tests. This helps the auditor to identify any potential gaps or weaknesses in the BCP's implementation and to determine whether any modifications or updates need to be made to the BCP. By reviewing the results of previous BCP tests, the auditor can also evaluate the effectiveness of the organization's risk management and business continuity strategies.

Once the auditor has reviewed the results of previous BCP tests, the auditor can then move on to other important factors such as reviewing the backup and restore processes. This helps the auditor to ensure that the organization has adequate backup and restore procedures in place to recover from a disaster. The auditor can also verify the criteria for disaster recovery site selection, which helps to ensure that the organization has identified suitable backup locations for its critical business functions.

Finally, the auditor should validate the recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives. Recovery time objective (RTO) is the amount of time an organization can tolerate before the critical business functions must be restored after a disaster. Recovery point objective (RPO) is the amount of data loss an organization can tolerate before the critical business functions must be restored after a disaster. Validating the RTO and RPO helps to ensure that the organization can recover its critical business functions within an acceptable timeframe.

In summary, when assessing the priority given to systems covered in an organization's BCP, the FIRST step an IS auditor should take is to review the results of previous BCP tests. Once this is done, the auditor can move on to other important factors such as reviewing the backup and restore processes, verifying the criteria for disaster recovery site selection, and validating the recovery time objectives and recovery point objectives.