What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on GS-3 Define and implement data protection strategy?

Enterprise data protection strategy document; Classification and protection standard it mandates; Named accountable owner; Evidence the strategy drives the technical controls in place.

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

strategy written for on-premises and not extended to cloud

Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark) · Governance and Strategy

`GS-3` Define and implement data protection strategy

Define and implement an enterprise data protection strategy covering classification and protection standards, key and certificate management, access control and lifecycle handling.

Source: Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark), GS-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

hard

to go live

Document repository

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

none for this control

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Evidence the strategy drives the technical controls in place · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Enterprise data protection strategy document · Document repository
Classification and protection standard it mandates · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Named accountable owner · Document repository

First move

No system holds this evidence for you: it is people and documents. Reminders and routing to the owner still save time. Put the document under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a record with reviewer and date.

Common gaps auditors find

strategy written for on-premises and not extended to cloud
no owner so it is never updated
strategy and deployed controls diverge with no reconciliation

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

GS-2 Define and implement enterprise segmentation/separation of duties strategy · GS-4 Define and implement network security strategy