What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on PR.AA-03 Users, services, and hardware are authenticated?

Multi factor authentication coverage report; Phishing resistant authentication rollout plan; Authentication failure analytics; Workload identity authentication policy; Periodic authentication strength review.

NIST CSF 2.0 · PR - Protect

`PR.AA-03` Users, services, and hardware are authenticated

Users, services, and hardware are authenticated. Control from NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 framework, domain: PR - Protect.

Source: NIST CSF 2.0, PR.AA-03. 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 NIST CSF 2.0 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

Multi factor authentication coverage report · Identity provider / directory

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Periodic authentication strength review · Identity provider / directory

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

Phishing resistant authentication rollout plan · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Authentication failure analytics · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Workload identity authentication policy · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Mostly documents and reviews. Pull the 1 system-held artefact from your Identity provider / directory on a schedule; put the documents under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

MFA fatigue not addressed
Legacy protocols still enabled
Workload identities use static secrets
Failure analytics not investigated

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

PR.AA-02 Identities are proofed and bound to credentials based on the context of interactions · PR.AA-04 Identity assertions are protected, conveyed, and verified