Auditors are not asking you to be perfect. They are asking you to be able to describe what you do, show that you actually do it, and produce evidence a third party can check.
This piece walks through how we think about it at Paycux, what we have changed our minds about, and where the sharp edges are.
What is access management?
What is access management? deserves its own treatment. Evidence is the deliverable. Not the policy document — the artifact that shows the policy was applied on a specific date to a specific system, produced without anyone editing a spreadsheet.
Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
The importance of access management
Consider the importance of access management. Separate the record from the data. Audit events are append-only and describe what happened; user records are mutable and describe who someone is. Keeping the two apart makes retention a job over a timestamp and erasure an operation on a row, instead of a negotiation between them.
Separate the record from the data. Audit events are append-only and describe what happened; user records are mutable and describe who someone is. Keeping the two apart makes retention a job over a timestamp and erasure an operation on a row, instead of a negotiation between them.
- Keep audit events append-only and separate from user records
- Describe each control in one sentence before automating it
- Produce evidence automatically, not by hand
- Decide retention per data category, in writing
Protecting sensitive data
That brings us to protecting sensitive data. Evidence is the deliverable. Not the policy document — the artifact that shows the policy was applied on a specific date to a specific system, produced without anyone editing a spreadsheet.
Evidence is the deliverable. Not the policy document — the artifact that shows the policy was applied on a specific date to a specific system, produced without anyone editing a spreadsheet.
Ensuring regulatory compliance
That brings us to ensuring regulatory compliance. Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
Write down the control before you automate it.
Enhancing operational efficiency
That brings us to enhancing operational efficiency. Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
Evidence is the deliverable. Not the policy document — the artifact that shows the policy was applied on a specific date to a specific system, produced without anyone editing a spreadsheet.
Supporting remote work and BYOD
That brings us to supporting remote work and byod. Separate the record from the data. Audit events are append-only and describe what happened; user records are mutable and describe who someone is. Keeping the two apart makes retention a job over a timestamp and erasure an operation on a row, instead of a negotiation between them.
Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
How access management works
How access management works deserves its own treatment. Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
Write down the control before you automate it. A control nobody can describe in a sentence will not survive its first review, no matter how well it is implemented.
Where this leaves us
The pattern repeats across every system we have looked at: the hard part is not the mechanism, it is keeping the mechanism honest as the surrounding assumptions change.
If you are working through the same problem and want to compare notes, the docs cover the mechanics and the console shows the behaviour on your own data.
Everything here, already built
Sign-in, enterprise SSO, directory provisioning, roles and an audit trail behind one API. Start with the quickstart and have a working sign-in this afternoon.