What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on IM-8 Restrict the exposure of credential and secrets?

Secret store in use and application integration pattern; Secret scanning enabled on repositories and its findings history; Pre-commit or pipeline gate blocking committed secrets; Rotation records for any credential found exposed.

What is the most common gap auditors find on IM-8?

connection strings in configuration files committed to source control

Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark) · Identity Management

`IM-8` Restrict the exposure of credential and secrets

Ensure developers handle credentials and secrets securely, keeping them out of code and configuration files, storing them in a secure key store and scanning source for exposed credentials.

Source: Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark), IM-8. 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 for any credential found exposed · Identity provider / directory

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Secret store in use and application integration pattern · Document repository
Secret scanning enabled on repositories and its findings history · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Pre-commit or pipeline gate blocking committed secrets · 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

connection strings in configuration files committed to source control
secret scanning enabled but findings never triaged
exposed credentials removed from the current commit but never rotated

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

IM-7 Restrict resource access based on conditions · IM-9 Secure user access to existing applications