Service continuity and availability controls

The service continuity and availability controls requirement under ISO/IEC 20000 expects you to manage availability and continuity risks for services you have committed to deliver, and to prove it with targets, plans, monitoring, and testing evidence ¹. Operationalize it by defining measurable availability commitments, mapping continuity scenarios to each committed service, implementing monitoring and incident response linkages, and running documented continuity tests with tracked remediation.

Key takeaways:

• Tie every “committed service” to explicit availability and continuity objectives, then measure and report against them ¹.
• Maintain continuity plans that are testable, tested, and updated based on results, not static documents ¹.
• Auditors will look for end-to-end evidence: commitments → risk assessment → controls → monitoring → testing → corrective actions ¹.

Service continuity and availability controls fail in practice for one reason: teams document intent, but cannot show that day-to-day operations consistently meet committed service levels or that continuity plans work under stress. ISO/IEC 20000 focuses on service management outcomes, so the bar is not “we have a DR plan.” The bar is “we manage availability and continuity risk for the services we promised, and we can prove we do it” ¹.

For a Compliance Officer, CCO, or GRC lead, the fastest path is to start with your service commitments (customer SLAs, internal OLAs, critical business services, contractual uptime commitments) and build a tight chain of evidence: defined targets, monitoring that measures the same targets, a continuity strategy with owned runbooks, and testing records that show learning and remediation. This page gives requirement-level implementation guidance you can hand to ITSM, SRE/Operations, and Business Continuity teams and then audit back to objective artifacts.

The goal is audit-ready control operation with minimal ambiguity: clear definitions, accountable owners, and repeatable proof.

Service continuity and availability controls requirement (ISO 20000): plain-English meaning

You must identify and manage the risks that could reduce availability or disrupt continuity for services you’ve committed to provide, and you must operate controls that keep those commitments credible over time ¹. Practically, that means:

• You know which services are “committed services” (contracted, published in a service catalog, or otherwise promised).
• Each committed service has defined availability expectations and continuity expectations.
• You monitor, respond, and improve based on real performance.
• You maintain continuity plans and test them, then fix what the tests reveal.

This requirement is outcome-driven. A policy alone will not pass scrutiny if you cannot show monitoring outputs, incident linkages, test evidence, and corrective actions.

Regulatory text

Provided excerpt (not the licensed standard text): “Baseline implementation-intent summary derived from publicly available framework overviews; licensed standard text is not reproduced in this record.” The implementation intent summary for this requirement is: “Manage service availability and continuity risks for committed services.” ¹

What the operator must do: implement governance, measurement, and tested continuity arrangements for each committed service so that availability and continuity risks are identified, controlled, and continuously improved ¹. Your operating model should make it hard for a critical service to exist without targets, monitoring, ownership, and a tested recovery approach.

Who it applies to (entity and operational context)

Applies to IT service providers seeking to align with ISO/IEC 20000 service management requirements ¹. In scope contexts commonly include:

• Internal IT organizations delivering shared services to the business (ERP, identity, network, endpoint, collaboration).
• External service providers delivering managed services, SaaS, hosting, support, and platform operations.
• Hybrid environments where third parties deliver key components (cloud, colocation, telecom, outsourced operations). Even if a third party runs part of the stack, you still own the customer commitment and must manage continuity and availability risk end-to-end.

What you actually need to do (step-by-step)

1) Define “committed services” and lock the inventory

1. Pull your service catalog and contracts. Mark services with explicit commitments (SLA/OLA, contractual uptime, support hours, RTO/RPO expectations, critical business service designation).
2. Assign an owner per committed service (service owner accountable for availability and continuity evidence).
3. Record dependencies for each service (infrastructure, identity, DNS, key third parties).

Output: committed service register with owners and dependency map.

2) Set availability objectives that can be measured

1. For each committed service, define availability targets and what “available” means (user transaction success, API response, login success, service endpoint health).
2. Define measurement method and scope (what is included/excluded, planned maintenance treatment, monitoring vantage points).
3. Align target reporting to the same definition used for incident severity and post-incident reviews.

Operator tip: auditors often find “availability targets” that aren’t measurable because the monitoring does not match the definition.

Output: availability objective statement per service, plus monitoring specification.

3) Identify continuity scenarios and choose continuity strategies

1. Run a service-specific continuity risk assessment: top causes of unavailability and disruption (capacity failure, region outage, third-party outage, data corruption, privileged access loss).
2. Decide continuity strategy by service criticality and feasible recovery options (active-active, active-passive, restore from backups, manual workaround, third-party failover).
3. Document assumptions and constraints (single region architecture, shared tenancy limits, third-party RTO constraints).

Output: continuity strategy per service, aligned to real architecture and third-party dependencies.

4) Build continuity plans that are executable (not narrative)

1. Create runbooks: detection triggers, decision points, roles, communications, recovery steps, validation steps, and rollback criteria.
2. Include operational prerequisites: access, break-glass accounts, contact lists, tooling, backup locations, keys/certificates.
3. Tie to incident management: when to declare a continuity event, who can declare, how to escalate.

Output: service continuity plan/runbook with named roles and maintained contact paths.

5) Implement monitoring, alerting, and reporting that evidences control operation

1. Configure monitoring to measure the agreed availability definition.
2. Create alerts mapped to incident severity, with on-call coverage and escalation paths.
3. Produce availability reports that match commitments and show trend, not just point-in-time snapshots.
4. Track continuity readiness indicators (backup job success, restore validation, capacity headroom signals, third-party status integration where possible).

Output: monitoring dashboards, alert rules, monthly availability reports, on-call and escalation documentation.

6) Test continuity plans and close the loop with corrective actions

1. Define a test plan per critical service: test objectives, scope, success criteria, and evidence to capture.
2. Execute tests (tabletop and technical recovery where feasible). Capture logs, screenshots, ticket references, and timelines.
3. Record findings and assign corrective actions with owners and due dates; track to closure.
4. Update runbooks, dependencies, and training based on test outcomes.

Output: test records, after-action reports, corrective action log, updated runbooks.

7) Control changes and third parties that affect availability/continuity

1. Ensure change management assesses availability and continuity impact for material changes (architecture changes, dependency swaps, major releases).
2. Include third-party continuity/availability in due diligence for critical providers: what they commit to, how you monitor, and what your exit/fallback is.
3. Keep contracts and SLAs consistent with what you can actually deliver.

Output: change risk assessment templates, third-party continuity review notes, dependency SLAs/OLAs.

Required evidence and artifacts to retain (audit-ready list)

Use this checklist to build your evidence binder for the service continuity and availability controls requirement:

• Committed service register (service catalog subset) with owners and criticality.
• Availability objectives per service, including measurement definitions.
• Monitoring configuration evidence (dashboards, alert rules, SLO/SLA reports) mapped to objectives.
• Incident records showing availability events, response actions, and post-incident reviews when applicable.
• Continuity strategy and service continuity runbooks per committed service.
• Continuity test plan(s), test execution evidence, results, and after-action reports.
• Corrective action tracking (tickets) showing remediation to closure.
• Change management records for changes with continuity/availability impact.
• Third-party dependency register for critical services and continuity assumptions.

Common exam/audit questions and hangups

Questions you should be ready to answer with artifacts:

• “Which services are committed services, and what are the availability expectations?”
• “Show how you measure availability for Service X and how that matches your stated definition.”
• “Where is the continuity plan for Service X, and who can execute it?”
• “Show the last continuity test for Service X and the corrective actions you closed.”
• “How do you ensure changes don’t reduce availability or break recoverability?”

Typical hangups auditors flag:

• Availability definitions are vague or inconsistent across monitoring, reporting, and SLAs.
• Continuity plans exist at a platform level but not at the service level, so ownership and execution steps are unclear.
• Tests are performed, but results are not translated into tracked corrective actions.
• Third-party dependencies are treated as “out of scope,” even when they are single points of failure.

Frequent implementation mistakes and how to avoid them

1. Mistake: Targets without measurement.
   Fix: write the definition and monitoring approach together, then validate reporting uses the same data source.

2. Mistake: “One DR plan for everything.”
   Fix: create a lightweight runbook per committed service that references shared platform procedures but keeps service-specific decision points and validations.

3. Mistake: Tests that prove little.
   Fix: define success criteria and evidence requirements before testing; require an after-action report and corrective action tickets.

4. Mistake: Treating third-party outages as unmanageable.
   Fix: document dependency assumptions, add detection and communications steps, and define fallback options (alternate provider, degraded mode, manual process) where feasible.

Enforcement context and risk implications (without over-claiming)

No public enforcement cases were provided in the source catalog for ISO/IEC 20000. Practically, the risk is certification or audit failure due to inability to demonstrate operational control over availability and continuity for committed services ¹. The business impact is predictable: customer dissatisfaction, contractual disputes, and operational disruption when continuity plans fail under real incidents.

Practical 30/60/90-day execution plan

First 30 days: lock scope, owners, and definitions

• Build the committed service register and dependency map.
• Select a standard availability definition template and measurement method.
• Identify gaps: services without owners, targets, monitoring, or continuity runbooks.
• Stand up a central evidence folder structure mapped to each committed service.

Days 31–60: implement controls and produce first-cycle evidence

• Finalize availability objectives and align monitoring/alerts to each objective.
• Draft service continuity runbooks for high-impact services and validate access prerequisites (contacts, credentials, tooling).
• Start regular availability reporting and incident-to-SLA traceability.
• Create corrective action workflow for continuity and availability findings.

Days 61–90: test, remediate, and harden

• Execute continuity tests for the most critical committed services; capture evidence.
• Run after-action reviews and close corrective actions with tracked tickets.
• Integrate continuity/availability checks into change management.
• Review third-party dependencies for critical services and document assumptions and fallback plans.

How Daydream helps (practitioner fit)

Daydream is useful when you need to operationalize the service continuity and availability controls requirement across many services and dependencies without losing evidence. Use it to map each committed service to required artifacts (targets, monitoring proof, test records), assign owners, and track corrective actions to closure so your audit trail stays complete and current.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need a separate continuity plan for every service?

You need service-level continuity coverage for each committed service, but it can be lightweight. A common approach is a shared platform recovery procedure plus a short service runbook that covers service-specific decision points, validations, and dependencies ¹.

What counts as “committed services” in practice?

Treat a service as committed if you promised availability, support, or recovery expectations to a customer or internal stakeholder through an SLA/OLA, contract, or published service description. Keep the list explicit and owned ¹.

How do I prove availability measurement is credible to an auditor?

Show a clear definition of “available,” the monitoring configuration that measures it, and reports generated from that same data. Then show incident records that reconcile with availability events ¹.

How should third-party outages be handled under this requirement?

Document the third party as a dependency, define how you detect and communicate the outage, and specify fallback or degraded modes where feasible. Auditors typically want to see that you managed the risk, not that you controlled the third party ¹.

What evidence matters most if I only have time to fix a few things?

Prioritize the chain for your most critical committed services: objective/definition, monitoring proof, continuity runbook, most recent test record, and corrective action closure. That combination shows control design and operation ¹.

We test, but remediation drags. How do we keep this audit-safe?

Treat test findings as formal corrective actions with owners and tracked completion evidence. Auditors usually accept open items when you show governance, prioritization, and progress tied to risk ¹.

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Footnotes

1. ISO/IEC 20000-1 overview