Evidence and audit
Proof that even we can’t rewrite.
Every step of every case, from the raw cloud state to the approval and the verification, becomes a signed record chained to the one before it. The chain lives in append-only storage in your own account, and an auditor can check it without us.
Audits without the scramble
The evidence builds itself as your team works, so there is nothing to reconstruct when the auditor asks.
Tamper-evident by design
Change, remove or reorder any record and the chain breaks. Verification says exactly where.
Yours to keep
Records sit in your storage, under your retention and legal holds, not in a vendor database.
What each case records
The facts an auditor asks for
Content alone is a log. Content sealed by integrity is evidence.
- Cloud state
- What the provider’s API returned, verbatim
- Policy
- The policy and the version in force that day
- Proposed fix
- The change, and how it was made
- Approval
- Who, when, with MFA, bound to the exact view
- Before and after
- Captured at the moment of change
- Verification
- An independent re-read after the change
How integrity works
Sealed, signed, verified
- Hash chainEach record includes the hash of the one before it, so nothing can be altered, inserted or deleted unnoticed.
- SignaturesRecords and exports are signed with keys generated by automation that no person has seen.
- Append-only storageRecords are written to object storage with a write-once retention lock, in your account.
- Observation and sealAfter the fix, ACSE watches for regression for a set window, then seals the case.
For auditors
Verify it offline
Export a case as a signed bundle. An auditor checks it on their own machine with the verifier, with no network and no ACSE account. Two independent verifiers, one in Python and one in TypeScript, must reach the same verdict.
- Attestations and exclusions sealed on their own tenant chain
- Audit packages per framework, built from sealed cases
- A read-only auditor role in the portal
Two scores
Governed beside raw, always
Accepted exceptions and attestations can change the governed score. The raw score is never altered, and both are shown together.
Example tenant · 120 controls
Governed: what your team has handled
Raw: what the cloud says right now, never adjusted
Both scores are always shown together, so a better governed score can never hide what the cloud reports. Illustrative numbers.
Questions
What people ask us
Can InitValue alter our evidence?
No. The records are written to append-only storage in your account, chained and signed. ACSE can show and verify them but cannot change them.
What does an auditor need to verify a case?
The exported bundle and the verifier. No ACSE account, no network connection and no trust in us.
Keep reading
Related
Auditors
Verify ACSE evidence offline with an open verifier and no ACSE account: a signed, hash-chained record of who approved each change and how it was tested.
ReadSolutionsAudit readiness
ACSE builds audit evidence as your team works: sealed cases, packages organized by control and a signed chain your auditor can verify offline on their own.
ReadLearnCompliance evidence
A dashboard shows status; an auditor needs evidence. Learn what makes cloud compliance evidence hold up, why raw and governed scores differ and how to check it.
ReadTalk to us
See ACSE on your cloud.
Tell us what you run and what your auditors ask for. We’ll show you the loop end to end: a real finding, a fix as code, an approval with MFA and the sealed record.