PA-5 Set up emergency access
Set up emergency access accounts so an outage of the normal identity path cannot lock the organisation out of critical cloud infrastructure, and protect and monitor those accounts tightly.
Source: Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark), PA-5. 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.
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
- Emergency access account inventory and their exclusion scope · Identity provider / directory
periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review
- Periodic test records confirming the accounts still work · Identity provider / directory
governing documentDocuments that govern the control
- Credential custody and split-knowledge procedure · Policy repository / GRC workspace
- Alerting on any use of an emergency account · Policy repository / GRC workspace
First move
Common gaps auditors find
- emergency accounts created but never tested and now expired
- no alert fires when an emergency account signs in
- emergency credentials stored in the same system they are meant to bypass
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 sheetPA-4 Review and reconcile user access regularly · PA-6 Use privileged access workstations