What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on PA-8 Determine access process for cloud provider support?

Documented approval process for provider support access; Customer lockbox or equivalent configuration and approver list; Log of support access requests, approvers and durations; Post-access review records.

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

support access approved ad hoc by whoever is on the ticket

Azure Security Benchmark v3 (renamed Microsoft cloud security benchmark) · Privileged Access

`PA-8` Determine access process for cloud provider support

Establish an approval process and secure access path for cloud provider support requests that involve temporary access to organisational data.

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

moderate

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

Log of support access requests, approvers and durations · SIEM / log platform

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Post-access review records · Identity provider / directory

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Documented approval process for provider support access · Vendor register / contract repository
Customer lockbox or equivalent configuration and approver list · Vendor register / contract repository

First move

Start with the 1 of 4 artefacts that already live in a system (SIEM / log platform); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

support access approved ad hoc by whoever is on the ticket
lockbox capability available but not enabled
no record of what the provider accessed or for how long

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

PA-7 Follow just enough administration (least privilege) principle · PV-1 Define and establish secure configurations