Engagement 03 · Audit
An independent review of your Azure environment — identity, networking, cost, compliance, and configuration drift. You get a clear written assessment and a prioritised remediation plan in days, not months.
Why this exists
Most Azure environments accumulate problems quietly. Permissions get over-granted, networks get flatter, costs creep up, and what's deployed slowly drifts from what's documented. By the time someone asks "are we secure? are we compliant? are we overspending?" the answers take weeks to find. This audit gives you those answers in days, with concrete next steps.
What's included
Privileged roles, group memberships, service principals, guest accounts, MFA coverage, and PIM usage. Where over-privilege lives and how to reduce it.
VNet topology, peering, NSG rules, public exposure, private endpoints, and DNS. We map what you have and flag what's at risk.
CIS / Microsoft cloud security benchmark scoring, Defender for Cloud findings triaged by severity, regulatory gaps for ISO 27001 / SOC 2 / GDPR-relevant controls.
Top spend categories, idle and oversized resources, missing reservations and savings plans, tag coverage, and forecast risk. Quick wins flagged.
Where the deployed state differs from what's in code (or what people think is there). Recommendations for an ongoing drift control process.
Logging coverage, alerting gaps, backup configuration, single points of failure, and runbook completeness. The unglamorous stuff that bites at 3am.
Deliverables
Timeline
Read-only access provisioned. Scope confirmed — which subscriptions, which workloads, which compliance frameworks matter.
Automated scans plus manual review across identity, network, cost, compliance, and operational health. Evidence gathered for every finding.
Written report delivered, walkthrough session with your team, prioritised remediation plan agreed.
FAQ
What access do you need?
Reader at the management group or subscription level for the audit itself, plus Defender for Cloud Reader and Cost Management Reader. Read-only — we don't change anything during the audit.
Can you do the remediation work too?
Yes. The audit deliberately ends with a plan, not the work itself, so you can decide how to proceed. Common follow-ups are Brownfield Terraform Migration, Security Posture, or the FinOps Review for cost-focused remediation.
How is this different from Defender for Cloud's recommendations?
Defender catches a lot, but it's also noisy and doesn't connect findings to your business risk. We use it as a data source, then add manual review and prioritisation. You get a plan you can act on, not a list of 400 alerts to triage.
Will you find things that look bad?
Probably. Every Azure environment we've audited has had at least a few "oh" moments. The point isn't to embarrass anyone — it's to surface the issues so you can fix them before someone else finds them.
Can we run this annually?
Yes, and many teams do. Ongoing drift control is also part of the Ongoing Platform Support retainer if you want it baked into your operating rhythm.
Next step
Book a 30-minute discovery call. We'll talk through scope, access requirements, and confirm pricing before any commitment.
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