In this guide, I will show you exactly how to implement ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 and ensure you pass your audit. You will get a complete walkthrough of the control, practical implementation examples, and access to the ISO 27001 templates and toolkit that make compliance easy.
I am Stuart Barker, an ISO 27001 Lead Auditor with over 30 years of experience conducting hundreds of audits. I will cut through the jargon to show you exactly what changed in the 2022 update and provide you with plain-English advice to get you certified.
Key Takeaways: ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 mandates that your ICT (Information and Communication Technology) systems are ready to support the business during a disruption. It is not enough to just have “backups”; you must have a tested plan that ensures your critical technology – servers, cloud services, and networks – can be recovered within a specific timeframe that the business has agreed upon.
Core requirements for compliance include:
- Business Impact Assessment (BIA): You cannot plan your recovery if you don’t know what is important. You must perform a BIA to identify which systems are critical (e.g., “Email is Priority 1, Social Media is Priority 3”).
- Defined Objectives (RTO & RPO): You must define exact targets for recovery. How long can you be offline (RTO)? How much data can you lose (RPO)? These are not IT decisions; they are business decisions.
- Testing & Exercising: A plan on paper is not enough. You must regularly test your ICT continuity (e.g., a failover test to a backup server) to prove it actually works.
- Redundancy: Implementation of technical resilience, such as duplicate hardware, failover internet lines, or multi-region cloud storage, to meet your availability targets.
Audit Focus: Auditors will look for the “Golden Thread”:
- Alignment: Does your Disaster Recovery (DR) plan match your BIA? (e.g., If the BIA says “Payroll must be up in 4 hours,” but your backup tape takes 24 hours to restore, you are non-compliant).
- Evidence of Testing: They will ask to see the report from your last DR test. If you haven’t tested it, you don’t have it.
Recovery Objectives Breakdown:
| Business Continuity Metric | Technical Definition | Operational Example | Compliance Justification | ISO 27001:2022 Mapping |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| RTO (Recovery Time Objective) | The target duration of time within which a business process must be restored after a disaster. | “Critical email services must be back online within 4 hours of failure.” | Directly determines downtime costs and technical architecture requirements. | 5.30 (ICT Readiness) |
| RPO (Recovery Point Objective) | The maximum targeted period in which data might be lost from an IT service due to a major incident. | “Database backups are executed every 1 hour to limit data loss.” | Determines the frequency of backup cycles and data loss impact on the ISMS. | 8.13 (Information Backup) |
| MTD (Maximum Tolerable Downtime) | The absolute upper limit of time a business process can be disrupted before irreparable damage occurs. | “A 24-hour total system outage would result in business insolvency.” | Establishes the upper bound for RTO and sets the recovery budget. | 5.30 (ICT Readiness) |
Table of contents
- Key Takeaways: ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity
- What is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30?
- Watch the ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Tutorial
- ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Podcast
- ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Requirements
- ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Benefits
- Why is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 important?
- ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Implementation Guide
- How to implement ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30
- Recovery Objectives Matrix Example
- ISO 27001 Templates
- How to comply
- How to pass an ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 audit
- What the auditor will check
- Top 3 ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 mistakes people make and how to avoid them
- Applicability of ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 across different business models.
- Fast Track ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Compliance with the ISO 27001 Toolkit
- ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 FAQ
- Related ISO 27001 Controls
- Further Reading
- ISO 27001 Controls and Attribute values
What is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30?
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 is ICT Readiness For Business Continuity which means the IT team having business continuity planned, implemented and tested.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity is an ISO 27001 control that wants you to plan, maintain and test ICT readiness based on business continuity objectives and continuity requirements.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Purpose
The purpose of ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity is to ensure the availability of the organisations information and other associated assets during disruption.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Definition
The ISO 27001 standard defines ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 as:
ICT readiness should be planned, implemented, maintained and tested based on business continuity objectives and ICT continuity requirements.
ISO 27001:2022 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity
Watch the ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Tutorial
In the video ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity I show you how to implement it and how to pass the audit.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Podcast
In this episode: Lead Auditor Stuart Barker and team do a deep dive into the ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness For Business Continuity. The podcast explores what it is, why it is important and the path to compliance.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Requirements
This ISO 27001 controls wants you to understand what your requirements are and to implement plans and processes for ICT Readiness. This will involve having an adequate structure in place to prepare, respond and mitigate disruption supported by people and teams with the responsibility, authority and competence.
You will undergo a Business Impact Assessment (BIA).
You will have plans for ICT continuity, response and recovery procedures that are regularly tested to evaluate them and that they are approved by management.
For those plans you are going to include performance and capacity specifications to meet the BCP requirements and objectives that you set out in your Business Impact Assessment (BIA). The plans will have Recovery Time Objectives (RTO) and procedures for resorting components. The Recovery Point Objective (RPO) will be defined and procedures for restoring information will be in place.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Benefits
Other than your ISO 27001 certification requiring it, the following are the top 5 benefits of ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity:
- You cannot get ISO 27001 certification without it.
- Improved security: You will have an effective information security response to a disruption
- Reduced risk: You will reduce the information security risks of a disruption and maintain and recover system and data availability
- Improved compliance: Standards and regulations require an effective business continuity be in place
- Reputation Protection: In the event of a breach having an effective business continuity system in place will reduce the potential for fines and reduce the PR impact of an event
Why is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 important?
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity is important as it allows you to respond and recover from disruption to ICT services regardless of the cause. It ensures continuity of prioritised activities by required ICT services. It allows you to respond before a disruption occurs and when you detect an incident that can result in disruption. You will maintain the availability of systems and data, respond to major incidents with the minimum impact following agreed and documents plans and procedures.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Implementation Guide
It is my experience that the best way to implement Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity is to implement business continuity aligned to the standard for business continuity, ISO 22301.
How to implement ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30
Implementing ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 requires a shift from reactive recovery to proactive organisational resilience. By aligning technical capabilities with business requirements, organisations ensure that critical ICT services remain available or are restored within acceptable timeframes following a major disruption. This action oriented workflow establishes a robust framework for ICT readiness, ensuring the integrity and availability of information processing facilities.
1. Execute a Comprehensive Business Impact Analysis (BIA)
Perform a systematic evaluation of business processes to identify which ICT services are critical to the survival of the organisation.
- Identify critical information assets and the underlying infrastructure supporting them.
- Determine the potential impact of service interruptions on legal compliance, reputation, and financial stability.
- Prioritise ICT services for recovery based on their criticality to core business functions.
2. Formalise Recovery Time (RTO) and Recovery Point (RPO) Objectives
Define clear technical targets for how quickly systems must be restored and the maximum allowable data loss for each critical service.
- Establish a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) for each service to define the maximum tolerable downtime.
- Set a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) to determine the frequency of data backups and the age of files that must be recoverable.
- Ensure these targets are approved by senior management and documented within the Information Security Management System (ISMS).
3. Provision Resilient Infrastructure and Redundant Backups
Build technical redundancy into the network and server architecture to eliminate single points of failure.
- Deploy high availability (HA) configurations or cloud based failover environments to maintain service continuity.
- Provision automated, off-site, and encrypted backups for all critical data repositories.
- Implement robust Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to secure the recovery environment.
4. Formalise Technical Disaster Recovery Procedures
Create step by step documentation that allows technical staff to restore ICT services even under high pressure scenarios.
- Document exact restoration steps for servers, databases, and network configurations.
- Include contact details for critical third party vendors and cloud service providers.
- Store these procedures in a secure, accessible location that remains available if the primary network is offline.
5. Validate Readiness through Scheduled Failover Testing
Institutionalise a testing regime to verify that recovery procedures actually meet the defined RTO and RPO targets.
- Conduct annual tabletop exercises and technical failover tests to identify gaps in recovery plans.
- Document the results of every test in a formal report, including a summary of technical failures and remediation steps.
- Update the Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) and Register of Entrants (ROE) based on the findings of each test.
Recovery Objectives Matrix Example
| Metric | Definition | Example | Why it matters? |
| RTO (Recovery Time) | How long until the system is back UP? | “Email must be back in 4 hours.” | Determines downtime costs. |
| RPO (Recovery Point) | How much data can we afford to lose? | “Backups every 1 hour.” | Determines data loss impact. |
| MTD (Max Tolerable Downtime) | The absolute limit before bankruptcy. | “If down for 24 hours, we fail.” | Sets the budget for RTO. |
ISO 27001 Templates
All of the business continuity documents that you need are included in the ISO 27001 Toolkit.
How to comply
To comply with ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity you are going to implement the ‘how’ to the ‘what’ the control is expecting. In short measure you are going to:
- Have an ISO 27001 topic specific policy for business continuity
- Conduct a Business Impact Assessment (BIA)
- Implement a process for business continuity and disaster recovery based on the BIA
- Incorporate that process into your business operations
How to pass an ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 audit
To pass an audit of ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity you are going to make sure that you have followed the steps above in how to comply and be able to evidence it in operation.
- Have a business impact assessment (BIA)
- Have a business continuity plan and disaster recovery plan
- Test the plans
- Test the information security requirements are in place as designed
What the auditor will check
The audit is going to check a number of areas. Lets go through the main ones
1. That you have documented your business continuity and disaster recovery plans
The audit will check the documentation, that you have reviewed it and signed and it off and that it represents what you actually do not what you think they want to hear.
2. That you can demonstrate the process working
They are going to ask you for evidence to the information security during a disruption and take at least one example. For this example you are going to show them and walk them through the process and prove that you followed it and that the process worked.
3. That you can learn your lesson
Documenting your lessons learnt and following this through to continual improvements or incident and corrective actions will be checked.
Top 3 ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 mistakes people make and how to avoid them
The most common mistakes people make for ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 ICT Readiness for Business Continuity are
1. Not having a documented disaster recovery and business continuity policy and plans.
This is the most common mistake made by organisations. Documentation is essential for effective business continuity and ICT Readiness.
2. Not having a business impact assessment (BIA)
Not understanding and not having a business impact assessment (BIA) that is documented and agreed with no link to the prioritisation of activities in the business continuity plans and no goals and targets for recovery.
3. Not Testing
It is important to monitor its effectiveness of the information security during a disruption. This means reviewing the process, conducting internal audits and reviewing actual incidents for lessons learnt. The number one thing to do it test and be able to evidence the test.
By avoiding these mistakes, you can ensure that you have an effective collection of evidence plan in place.
Applicability of ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 across different business models.
| Business Type | Applicability | Examples of Control Implementation |
|---|---|---|
| Small Businesses | Highly applicable for ensuring that the business can survive a sudden outage of critical tools like email or banking. The focus is on simple, effective plans and basic restoration testing to prove downtime won’t be fatal. |
|
| Tech Startups | Critical for startups with strict Service Level Agreements (SLAs) for their customers. Compliance involves technical resilience and automated failover tests to ensure the product remains available during infrastructure failures. |
|
| AI Companies | Vital for protecting massive training pipelines and proprietary models. Focus is on high-performance computing (HPC) resilience and ensuring that large-scale data processing can be resumed without starting from scratch. |
|
Fast Track ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 Compliance with the ISO 27001 Toolkit
For ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 (ICT readiness for business continuity), the requirement is to plan, implement, maintain, and test ICT readiness based on business continuity objectives. This ensures your technology stack, servers, networks, and cloud services, can actually recover within the specific timeframes (RTO) and with the data integrity (RPO) the business needs to survive a disaster.
| Compliance Factor | SaaS Compliance Platforms | High Table ISO 27001 Toolkit | Audit Evidence Example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Strategy Ownership | Rents access to your continuity plans; if you cancel the subscription, your documented RTO/RPO targets and test history vanish. | Permanent Assets: Fully editable Word/Excel BIA and ICT Continuity Plan templates that you own forever. | A localized “Business Impact Analysis” defining the Maximum Tolerable Downtime (MTD) for critical revenue systems. |
| Recovery Governance | Attempts to “automate” resilience via dashboards that cannot determine if 4 hours of downtime is acceptable for your specific model. | Governance-First: Provides the “Golden Thread” connecting business needs to technical recovery capabilities. | A “Recovery Objectives Matrix” proving that your backup frequency (RPO) meets the business’s data loss tolerance. |
| Cost Efficiency | Charges a “Resilience Tax” based on the number of DR plans or business units monitored, creating perpetual overhead. | One-Off Fee: A single payment covers your ICT readiness governance for 2 systems or 200. | Allocating budget to redundant internet lines or off-site storage rather than monthly “readiness” dashboard fees. |
| Architectural Freedom | Mandates rigid reporting formats that often fail to account for complex multi-cloud or specialized on-premise hardware. | 100% Agnostic: Procedures adapt to any stack—automated failover, serverless architectures, or manual recovery steps. | The ability to evolve your DR strategy (e.g., migrating from on-prem to AWS) without reconfiguring a rigid SaaS module. |
Summary: For Annex A 5.30, the auditor wants to see the “Golden Thread”: that your DR plan matches your BIA and that you have proof of testing (e.g., test reports and recovery objective matrices). The High Table ISO 27001 Toolkit provides the governance framework to satisfy this requirement immediately. It is the most direct, cost-effective way to achieve compliance using permanent documentation that you own and control.
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 FAQ
What is ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30?
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.30 (ICT Readiness for Business Continuity) is a technical security control that ensures an organisation’s information and communication technology can be recovered to a functional state within required timeframes following a disruption.
- It focuses on the resilience of infrastructure, applications, and data.
- It requires the identification of specific recovery objectives (RTO and RPO).
- It mandates that recovery plans are documented, maintained, and tested.
- It bridges the gap between high-level business continuity and technical disaster recovery.
Is ICT readiness mandatory for ISO 27001 certification?
Yes, ICT readiness is a mandatory requirement if your Risk Assessment and Statement of Applicability (SoA) identify business continuity as a necessary safeguard for your information assets.
- Auditors expect to see technical evidence that your systems support business survival.
- Failure to document recovery timeframes can result in a major non-conformity.
- It is essential for any organisation relying on digital services or cloud infrastructure.
What is the difference between BCP and ICT Readiness?
Business Continuity Planning (BCP) focuses on the survival of the entire organisation and its people, whereas ICT Readiness (Annex A 5.30) specifically addresses the availability and recovery of the underlying technology stack.
- BCP covers office space, manual workarounds, and staff safety.
- ICT Readiness covers server failover, data restoration, and network uptime.
- Annex A 5.30 serves as the technical “engine” that enables the broader BCP to succeed.
What are RTO and RPO in the context of Annex A 5.30?
Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) are the two mandatory metrics used to define the speed of recovery and the maximum allowable data loss, respectively.
- RTO: The maximum duration of time within which a system must be restored after a failure.
- RPO: The maximum age of files that must be recovered from backup storage for operations to resume.
- These metrics must be derived from a formal Business Impact Analysis (BIA).
How often should ICT continuity plans be tested?
ISO 27001 requires ICT continuity plans to be tested at planned intervals, which typically translates to at least once per year or following significant infrastructure changes.
- Testing can range from “tabletop” walkthroughs to full-scale technical failover drills.
- All tests must be documented, including a summary of “lessons learned.”
- Evidence of testing is a primary requirement for passing an ISO 27001 audit.
What documentation is required for Annex A 5.30?
To satisfy an auditor, organisations must maintain a suite of documents including a Business Impact Analysis (BIA), Disaster Recovery Plans (DRP), and testing logs.
- A register of critical ICT assets and their associated RTO/RPO.
- Step-by-step technical recovery procedures for primary systems.
- Evidence of backup integrity and off-site storage configurations.
- A schedule of planned tests and the results of previous exercises.
How does Control 5.30 differ from the old Annex A 17?
The 2022 update consolidated the previously fragmented Annex A 17 controls into a single, more comprehensive focus on “ICT Readiness” rather than just general “Information Security Continuity.”
- The focus has shifted toward proactive “readiness” rather than just reactive “continuity.”
- It places greater emphasis on technical performance and measurable recovery metrics.
- It aligns more closely with ISO 22301 (Business Continuity Management) standards.
Related ISO 27001 Controls
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.21 Managing Information Security In The ICT Supply Chain
ISO 27001 Annex A 5.29 Information Security During Disruption
Further Reading
The complete guide to ISO/IEC 27002:2022
ISO 27001 Business Continuity Policy Beginner’s Guide
Business Continuity Policy Template
ISO 27001 Controls and Attribute values
| Control type | Information security properties | Cybersecurity concepts | Operational capabilities | Security domains |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corrective | Availability | Respond | Continuity | Resilience |
