Evidence collection automation is the use of technology to systematically gather, organize, and maintain compliance evidence without manual intervention. It replaces the traditional approach of scrambling to collect screenshots, export logs, and compile documents before audits with automated pipelines that continuously capture control operation evidence. Automated evidence includes system configurations, access review records, policy acknowledgments, vulnerability scan results, training completion records, and change management logs.
Automation pipelines connect to organizational systems through APIs and integrations. Identity providers export access review evidence automatically. Vulnerability scanners push scan results to evidence repositories with timestamps and metadata. Configuration management tools capture system state snapshots on defined schedules. HR systems provide training completion records. Policy management platforms track acknowledgments. Each evidence artifact is automatically tagged with the control requirement it satisfies, the collection date, the source system, and the applicable compliance frameworks. Evidence is stored in tamper-evident repositories with retention policies aligned to regulatory requirements. Dashboard views show evidence coverage across all control requirements with gap identification.
Manual evidence collection consumes hundreds of hours per audit cycle, is error-prone, and produces stale evidence that may not reflect current control status. Automation reduces evidence collection effort by up to 80%, ensures evidence is always current, eliminates human error in compilation, and enables continuous audit readiness. As organizations face multiple overlapping compliance requirements, automated evidence collection prevents the multiplication of effort that manual approaches create.
CDA's platform architecture treats evidence generation as a byproduct of operational activity. Every completed theater mission automatically produces evidence artifacts mapped to specific compliance controls through the Rosetta Stone engine. The RGA domain includes dedicated missions for implementing evidence automation pipelines that extend this capability across the organization's entire security tooling ecosystem.