What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on PV-1 Define and establish secure configurations?

Baseline definition per resource type; Policy or template implementing the baseline at deployment; Exception register with owner and expiry; Coverage report showing resource types with and without a baseline.

What is the most common gap auditors find on PV-1?

baselines documented in prose but not encoded in policy

Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark) · Posture and Vulnerability Management

`PV-1` Define and establish secure configurations

Define secure configuration baselines for each resource type in the cloud, or establish them automatically through configuration management before or during deployment so environments are compliant by default.

Source: Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark), PV-1. 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

Policy repository / GRC workspace

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

Coverage report showing resource types with and without a baseline · Cloud console / configuration management

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Baseline definition per resource type · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Policy or template implementing the baseline at deployment · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Exception register with owner and expiry · Policy repository / GRC workspace

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

baselines documented in prose but not encoded in policy
baseline exists for virtual machines only
new resource types deployed with no baseline defined

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

PA-8 Determine access process for cloud provider support · PV-2 Audit and enforce secure configurations