What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on IR-4 Detection and analysis - investigate an incident?

Log source inventory mapped to attack chain stages; Analyst query access to those sources; Documented gap analysis identifying blind spots; Investigation records demonstrating cross-source correlation.

What is the most common gap auditors find on IR-4?

only alert data retained, not the underlying telemetry

Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark) · Incident Response

`IR-4` Detection and analysis - investigate an incident

Ensure the security operations team can query and use diverse data sources when investigating potential incidents, collecting logs broadly enough to track activity across the attack chain without blind spots.

Source: Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark), IR-4. 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

Investigation records demonstrating cross-source correlation · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Log source inventory mapped to attack chain stages · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Analyst query access to those sources · Document repository
Documented gap analysis identifying blind spots · 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

only alert data retained, not the underlying telemetry
analysts must request log access per investigation, costing hours
identity, network and endpoint logs held in separate systems that cannot be joined

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

IR-3 Detection and analysis - create incidents based on high-quality alerts · IR-5 Detection and analysis - prioritize incidents