CIS Controls v8 11.5 — Test Data Recovery

What this control requires

Test backup recovery quarterly, or more frequently, for a sampling of in-scope enterprise assets.

In plain English

Test backup recovery quarterly, or more frequently, for a sampling of in-scope enterprise assets. In practice, this means you can prove you test data-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

The CIS Controls are an industry-vetted, prioritised defence: skipping a safeguard widens the attack surface that the safeguards above and below it assume is closed. Audit frameworks (FedRAMP, PCI DSS, HIPAA) all cite CIS as evidence of due care.

This control is rated high. Auditors expect a named owner, a remediation SLA, and a tooling artefact that evidences continuous operation.

What an auditor looks for

A CIS-aligned reviewer wants to see (a) which Implementation Group you are targeting, (b) a documented owner for the safeguard, and (c) a tooling or process artefact (config, scan output, ticket) that proves the safeguard runs on the cadence the control demands.

Within Recover, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control 11.5) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Incident Response

Runbook. Maintain a runbook keyed by incident type with named roles (IC, comms, scribe), an out-of-band comms channel, and a 72-hour timeline for external notification.

Tabletop. Run a quarterly tabletop exercise (ransomware, insider, supply-chain) and feed gaps back into the runbook.

Code Review Testing

Pipeline. Require at least one human reviewer plus passing CI (lint, type, unit, security scan) before merge — protected branches enforce this.

Operational checklist

• Test. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: data, data recovery, response, enterprise.

Evidence to collect

• Ticketing Workflow. ticketing_workflow evidence
• Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

Workflow metrics (ServiceNow, Jira) show approvals and remediation. Focus: Test Data Recovery.

Common pitfalls

• Runbooks that name a role but no person, or list a paging channel that no longer exists.

How it maps to other frameworks

Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.

• NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 IR-3(2) — Coordination With Related Plans
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC7.5 — Security Incident Recovery Activities
• BSI C5:2020 DEV-09 — Approvals for provision in the production environment
• GDPR Article 49 — Derogations for specific situations

Related controls in CIS Controls v8

• Control 11.2 — Perform Automated Backups
• Control 11.1 — Establish and Maintain a Data Recovery Process
• Control 17.7 — Conduct Routine Incident Response Exercises
• Control 17.9 — Establish and Maintain Security Incident Thresholds
• Control 11.4 — Establish and Maintain an Isolated Instance of Recovery Data
• Control 17.4 — Establish and Maintain an Incident Response Process

References

• Center for Internet Security — CIS Controls v8
• Catalogue identifier: Control 11.5

Topics: governance riskbackup recoverychange managementincident responsecode review testing