What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on GS-6 Define and implement identity and privileged access strategy?

Identity and privileged access strategy document; Authentication standard including strength requirements; Privileged access model and its governing policy; Joiner, mover and leaver process aligned to the strategy.

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

strategy covers employees only, omitting workload and partner identities

Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark) · Governance and Strategy

`GS-6` Define and implement identity and privileged access strategy

Define and implement an identity and privileged access strategy with documented guidance, policy and standards for the identity system, authentication strength, privileged access and entitlement lifecycle.

Source: Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark), GS-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

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Identity and privileged access strategy document · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Authentication standard including strength requirements · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Privileged access model and its governing policy · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Joiner, mover and leaver process aligned to the strategy · 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

strategy covers employees only, omitting workload and partner identities
privileged access approach differs per platform with no unifying policy
strategy silent on entitlement review cadence

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.

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