A core goal of OS baseline compliance and monitoring is to ensure that virtual images and operating systems adhere to approved baseline configuration requirements. Managing Cloud documentation explains that baseline configurations define secure settings for operating systems, including disabled services, patch levels, access controls, and logging configurations.

Compliance monitoring continuously verifies that systems remain aligned with these baselines over time. This helps detect unauthorized changes, configuration drift, or misconfigurations that could introduce vulnerabilities. Ensuring that virtual images meet baseline standards before deployment also reduces risk across scaled cloud environments.

The other options relate to availability, network isolation, or data separation, which are addressed by different controls. Therefore, ensuring baseline configuration compliance is the primary goal of OS baseline monitoring.