What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 18 Restrict administrative privileges (Essential)?

Separate privileged and unprivileged account pairs for each administrator, with login records showing admin accounts not used for email; Privileged account register listing each admin account, its owner, the duties justifying it and approval date; Records of periodic privilege revalidation with managers confirming or removing each account; Technical controls blocking email and web browsing from privileged accounts, such as proxy deny rules or mail licence removal.

What is the most common gap auditors find on 18?

Helpdesk and developers hold domain admin rights that go well beyond their duties

ASD Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents · Limiting the Extent of Cyber Security Incidents

`18` Restrict administrative privileges (Essential)

Restrict administrative privileges to operating systems and applications based on user duties. Regularly revalidate the need for privileges. Don't use privileged accounts for reading email and web browsing.

Source: ASD Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents, 18. The statement above is our statement of the clause, read from the published text and cited so you can check it against the official text, not the instrument verbatim. Open ASD Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents in the compliance library.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

moderate

to go live

Identity provider / directory

where the evidence lives

teal = a system already holds it · olive = produced at each review. To go live: easy when half or more of the artefacts are already held by a system, moderate from a quarter to a half, hard below a quarter.

These are the artefacts auditors commonly ask for on this requirement, our guidance rather than text from the standard. Your assessor decides what is sufficient in your context, and asks for samples across the period when a report covers one.

system holds itEvidence a system already holds

Privileged account register listing each admin account, its owner, the duties justifying it and approval date · Identity provider / directory

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Separate privileged and unprivileged account pairs for each administrator, with login records showing admin accounts not used for email · Identity provider / directory
Records of periodic privilege revalidation with managers confirming or removing each account · Identity provider / directory

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Technical controls blocking email and web browsing from privileged accounts, such as proxy deny rules or mail licence removal · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Start with the 1 of 4 artefacts that already live in a system (Identity provider / directory); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Helpdesk and developers hold domain admin rights that go well beyond their duties
Privilege reviews rubber-stamped with no accounts ever removed, or not performed after role changes
Administrators use a single account for daily email, browsing and privileged tasks

Do this for your whole sheet

Paste the rows you run your controls from and get this mapping for every control at once, with the periodic-review ones flagged and a first move per row. No account for the first run.

Build my evidence sheet

17 TLS encryption between email servers (Limited) · 19 Patch operating systems (Essential)