What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on BR-3 Monitor backups?

Backup compliance report listing protectable resources and their protection state; Alerting on failed or missed backup jobs; Reconciliation between the asset inventory and protected resources; Remediation records for unprotected critical resources.

What is the most common gap auditors find on BR-3?

backup jobs monitored but resource coverage never reconciled against the inventory

Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark) · Backup and Recovery

`BR-3` Monitor backups

Monitor backups so all business-critical protectable resources are confirmed compliant with the defined backup policy and standard.

Source: Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark), BR-3. 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 Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark) in the compliance library.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

moderate

to go live

Backup / DR tooling

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

Backup compliance report listing protectable resources and their protection state · Backup / DR tooling

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Remediation records for unprotected critical resources · Backup / DR tooling

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Alerting on failed or missed backup jobs · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Reconciliation between the asset inventory and protected resources · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Start with the 1 of 4 artefacts that already live in a system (Backup / DR tooling); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

backup jobs monitored but resource coverage never reconciled against the inventory
new resources created without backup and never detected
failed jobs logged but no alert reaches an owner

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

BR-2 Protect backup and recovery data · BR-4 Regularly test backup