What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on 23 Protect authentication credentials (Excellent)?

Credential exposure test results, such as attempted memory credential dumping on a sample host, showing no cleartext secrets recovered; Configuration showing Credential Guard, LSA protection or equivalent is enabled to protect credentials in memory; Group policy settings limiting cached domain logons and disabling WDigest plaintext credential storage; Description and access records for the central credential vault holding service and admin passwords.

What is the most common gap auditors find on 23?

Cached logon count left at default on servers where no offline logon is required

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

`23` Protect authentication credentials (Excellent)

Protect authentication credentials by removing them from memory when no longer needed. Use credential caching only when required. Centralise credential storage.

Source: ASD Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents, 23. 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

easy

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

Configuration showing Credential Guard, LSA protection or equivalent is enabled to protect credentials in memory · Identity provider / directory
Group policy settings limiting cached domain logons and disabling WDigest plaintext credential storage · Identity provider / directory

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Credential exposure test results, such as attempted memory credential dumping on a sample host, showing no cleartext secrets recovered · Identity provider / directory
Description and access records for the central credential vault holding service and admin passwords · Identity provider / directory

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

none for this control

First move

Automate the pull from your Identity provider / directory. Scheduled export of users, roles and MFA state from the directory; access-review completion pulled from the IdP, not a spreadsheet.

Common gaps auditors find

Cached logon count left at default on servers where no offline logon is required
Service account passwords stored in scripts, spreadsheets or configuration files instead of a vault
Legacy protocols keep plaintext or reversible credentials in memory on older hosts

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

22 Network segmentation (Excellent) · 24 Non-persistent virtualised sandboxed environment (Very Good)