What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on LT-7 Use approved time synchronization sources?

Approved time source list and configuration on hosts and services; Drift monitoring results; Timestamp and time zone convention applied in logging; Evidence of correlation across systems during an investigation.

What is the most common gap auditors find on LT-7?

hosts pointing at arbitrary public time servers

Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark) · Logging and Threat Detection

`LT-7` Use approved time synchronization sources

Use approved time synchronisation sources for log timestamps so recorded date, time and time zone are consistent and correlatable across systems.

Source: Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark), LT-7. 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

easy

to go live

Cloud console / configuration management

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

Approved time source list and configuration on hosts and services · Cloud console / configuration management
Drift monitoring results · SIEM / log platform

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Evidence of correlation across systems during an investigation · Document repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Timestamp and time zone convention applied in logging · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Automate the pull from your Cloud console / configuration management. Configuration snapshots and change history from the cloud console or IaC repository, diffed against the baseline.

Common gaps auditors find

hosts pointing at arbitrary public time servers
time zone recorded as local rather than a fixed reference
drift unmonitored so correlation silently fails

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

LT-6 Configure log storage retention · NS-1 Establish network segmentation boundaries