TheArtOfService
UK Cyber EssentialsAzure Security Benchmark

UK Cyber Essentials covers 15.3% of Azure Security Benchmark

13 of the 85 controls in Azure Security Benchmark are already satisfied by evidence you collected for UK Cyber Essentials. 72 are genuine gaps. Every claim below was judged against both control sets and then argued against; the ones that did not survive are published further down with the reason each failed.

15.3%
of the target already covered
13
controls evidenced
72
genuine gaps
0
claims rejected in review

This number is directional. It says how much of Azure Security Benchmark your UK Cyber Essentials evidence satisfies. The reverse pair is a different number, often very different, because a security standard has enormous depth for access control and almost none for lawful basis or data subject rights.

40 candidate mappings were examined and 0 were removed. Signed off 2026-08-19, review level machine verified. Mappings were judged by Claude Code rather than read line by line by a practitioner. Every claim shows its reasoning so you can check it. Ask and a practitioner will review this pair.

Where the gaps are

Coverage is never evenly spread. A source standard usually satisfies one part of a target almost completely and barely touches another, and which part is which is the thing worth knowing before you plan the work.

Endpoint Security2 of 3 evidenced, 1 to do
Privileged Access4 of 8 evidenced, 4 to do
Network Security3 of 10 evidenced, 7 to do
Identity Management2 of 9 evidenced, 7 to do
Asset Management1 of 5 evidenced, 4 to do
Posture and Vulnerability Management1 of 7 evidenced, 6 to do
Backup and Recovery0 of 4 evidenced, 4 to do
Data Protection0 of 8 evidenced, 8 to do
DevOps Security0 of 7 evidenced, 7 to do
Governance and Strategy0 of 10 evidenced, 10 to do
Incident Response0 of 7 evidenced, 7 to do
Logging and Threat Detection0 of 7 evidenced, 7 to do

Theme level, not control level, deliberately. The per-control list of what is evidenced and what is a gap is the report itself, so publishing it here would be publishing the thing being sold.

Claims that held

A sample. Each one names the control whose evidence does the work, the control it satisfies, and why.

CE-MP.4ASB v3 AM-5argued against and upheld
Use only approved applications in virtual machine

Both require a maintained allowlist so only approved software executes on machines.

CE-MP.3ASB v3 ES-2argued against and upheld
Use modern anti-malware software

Both require real-time on-access scanning rather than scheduled scans alone.

CE-MP.1ASB v3 ES-2argued against and upheld
Use modern anti-malware software

Both require a current anti-malware solution deployed on every in-scope endpoint.

CE-MP.2ASB v3 ES-3argued against and upheld
Ensure anti-malware software and signatures are updated

Both require anti-malware signatures and engine kept up to date across endpoints.

CE-AC.7ASB v3 IM-2argued against and upheld
Protect identity and authentication systems

Both require strong multi-factor authentication on the administrative accounts.

CE-AC.4ASB v3 IM-2argued against and upheld
Protect identity and authentication systems

Both require privileged roles restricted through an approval process and tracked.

CE-AC.8ASB v3 IM-6argued against and upheld
Use strong authentication controls

Both accept phishing-resistant passwordless methods such as FIDO2 and hardware keys.

CE-AC.7ASB v3 IM-6argued against and upheld
Use strong authentication controls

Both require multi-factor authentication enforced on administrative accounts.

Claims that did not hold

Nothing proposed for this pair was rejected in review. That is unusual and worth knowing rather than hiding: it means the candidate set was small and every candidate held.

The full report

Everything above is a sample. The report is every evidenced control and every gap, with the reasoning and the source document behind each one, in a form you can hand to an assessor. $299, emailed immediately.

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