What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on PV-3 Define and establish secure configurations for compute resources?

Compute hardening standard referencing a recognised benchmark; Hardened image build pipeline and its output catalogue; Container base image standard and admission policy; Baseline coverage across virtual machine and container estates.

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

hardening applied post-deployment by script that sometimes fails

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

`PV-3` Define and establish secure configurations for compute resources

Define secure configuration baselines specifically for compute resources such as virtual machines and containers, established automatically at or before deployment.

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

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

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Compute hardening standard referencing a recognised benchmark · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Hardened image build pipeline and its output catalogue · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Container base image standard and admission policy · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Baseline coverage across virtual machine and container estates · 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

hardening applied post-deployment by script that sometimes fails
container workloads exempt from the compute baseline
hardened images built once and never refreshed

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

PV-2 Audit and enforce secure configurations · PV-4 Audit and enforce secure configurations for compute resources