What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on A.8.5 Secure authentication?

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.5, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats; An authentication standard linking required authentication strength to information classification and system criticality; MFA configuration and coverage reports for critical systems, remote access and privileged access, including conditional or risk-based rules; Log-on configuration showing warning banners, generic error messages, lockout or throttling after failed attempts and masked password entry; Authentication logs recording successful and failed attempts, with alerting on suspected brute force.

What is the most common gap auditors find on A.8.5?

MFA is enabled for some critical systems but legacy protocols allow bypass

ISO/IEC 27001:2022 · Technological controls

`A.8.5` Secure authentication

Secure authentication technologies and procedures are to be put in place, driven by the information access restrictions and the access control policy. Purpose (stated in ISO/IEC 27002:2022): ensures users and entities are securely authenticated when granted access to systems, applications and services. As an Annex A reference control, it is compared with the controls determined in risk treatment (6.1.3 c) and recorded in the Statement of Applicability as included or excluded, with the justification and implementation status (6.1.3 d); implementation guidance is ISO/IEC 27002:2022 8.5.

Source: ISO/IEC 27001:2022, A.8.5. 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 ISO/IEC 27001:2022 in the compliance library.

Clauses 4 to 10 are the management-system requirements: none of them can be excluded when an organisation claims conformity. The 93 Annex A controls are a reference set: one may be excluded with a justification in the Statement of Applicability. Certification bodies assess conformity; the evidence lists here are what auditors commonly ask for, not a list the standard prescribes.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

easy

to go live

Identity provider / directory

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

MFA configuration and coverage reports for critical systems, remote access and privileged access, including conditional or risk-based rules · Identity provider / directory
Log-on configuration showing warning banners, generic error messages, lockout or throttling after failed attempts and masked password entry · Identity provider / directory
Authentication logs recording successful and failed attempts, with alerting on suspected brute force · Identity provider / directory

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Statement of Applicability entry for control A.8.5, showing inclusion or justified exclusion, implementation status and the risks it treats · Policy repository / GRC workspace
An authentication standard linking required authentication strength to information classification and system criticality · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Automate the pull from your Identity provider / directory. Scheduled export of users, roles and MFA state from the directory; access-review completion pulled from the IdP, not a spreadsheet.

Common gaps auditors find

MFA is enabled for some critical systems but legacy protocols allow bypass
Error messages reveal whether the username or the password was wrong
No lockout or rate limiting exists on internet-facing log-on pages
Biometric authentication has no fallback method

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

A.8.4 Access to source code · A.8.6 Capacity management