What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on SEC06-BP03 Reduce manual management and interactive access?

Runbooks and automation documents covering routine compute tasks; Break-glass procedure for interactive access with approval steps; Session logs for any interactive access with justification; Metrics on the proportion of tasks executed by automation.

What is the most common gap auditors find on SEC06-BP03?

routine SSH or RDP access as normal practice

AWS Well-Architected Security Pillar · Infrastructure Protection

`SEC06-BP03` Reduce manual management and interactive access

Perform deployment, configuration, maintenance and investigation on compute through automation, restricting interactive human access to emergency or sandbox situations.

Source: AWS Well-Architected Security Pillar, SEC06-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

SIEM / log platform

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

Session logs for any interactive access with justification · SIEM / log platform
Metrics on the proportion of tasks executed by automation · Policy repository / GRC workspace

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Runbooks and automation documents covering routine compute tasks · Document repository
Break-glass procedure for interactive access with approval steps · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Automate the pull from your SIEM / log platform. Retention and alert rules exported from the SIEM; review evidence is the closed-alert record with reviewer and time.

Common gaps auditors find

routine SSH or RDP access as normal practice
break-glass credentials shared and never rotated
interactive sessions unlogged so actions cannot be reconstructed

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

SEC06-BP02 Provision compute from hardened images · SEC06-BP04 Validate software integrity