What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on SEC02-BP03 Store and use secrets securely?

Secrets Manager inventory; Rotation lambda configuration; Secret access IAM policies; Git secret scanning results.

What is the most common gap auditors find on SEC02-BP03?

secrets in environment variables or code

AWS Well-Architected Security Pillar · Identity & Access Management

`SEC02-BP03` Store and use secrets securely

Store application secrets, database credentials and API keys in AWS Secrets Manager or Parameter Store with encryption, automatic rotation and least privilege access policies.

Source: AWS Well-Architected Security Pillar, SEC02-BP03. 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 AWS Well-Architected Security Pillar in the compliance library.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

easy

to go live

Cloud console / configuration management

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

Rotation lambda configuration · Cloud console / configuration management
Secret access IAM policies · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Git secret scanning results · Vulnerability scanner / patch tooling

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Secrets Manager inventory · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Automate the pull from your Cloud console / configuration management. Configuration snapshots and change history from the cloud console or IaC repository, diffed against the baseline.

Common gaps auditors find

secrets in environment variables or code
no rotation enabled
broad read access to all secrets

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

SEC02-BP02 Use temporary credentials · SEC02-BP04 Rely on a centralized identity provider