What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on DP-6 Use a secure key management process?

Cryptographic key management standard; Key inventory with owner, algorithm, purpose and expiry; Key vault configuration and access policy; Rotation records and evidence of retiring superseded keys.

What is the most common gap auditors find on DP-6?

keys held in application configuration rather than a vault

Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark) · Data Protection

`DP-6` Use a secure key management process

Document and implement an enterprise cryptographic key management standard covering the key lifecycle, with keys generated, distributed and stored in a secured key vault service and rotated on a defined schedule.

Source: Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark), DP-6. 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 Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark) in the compliance library.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

hard

to go live

Policy repository / GRC workspace

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

none for this control

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Rotation records and evidence of retiring superseded keys · Key management / PKI

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Cryptographic key management standard · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Key inventory with owner, algorithm, purpose and expiry · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Key vault configuration and access policy · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

No system holds this evidence for you: it is people and documents. Reminders and routing to the owner still save time. Put the document under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a record with reviewer and date.

Common gaps auditors find

keys held in application configuration rather than a vault
no rotation schedule so keys live indefinitely
key inventory incomplete so orphan keys persist

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

DP-5 Use customer-managed key option in data at rest encryption when required · DP-7 Use a secure certificate management process