CIS Controls v8 6.1 — Establish an Access Granting Process

What this control requires

Establish and follow a process, preferably automated, for granting access to enterprise assets upon new hire, rights grant, or role change of a user.

In plain English

Establish and follow a process, preferably automated, for granting access to enterprise assets upon new hire, rights grant, or role change of a user. In practice, this means you can prove you establish user-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

The CIS Controls are an industry-vetted, prioritised defence: skipping a safeguard widens the attack surface that the safeguards above and below it assume is closed. Audit frameworks (FedRAMP, PCI DSS, HIPAA) all cite CIS as evidence of due care.

This control is rated critical in the source catalogue. Treat gaps here as production incidents in the risk register, not housekeeping.

What an auditor looks for

A CIS-aligned reviewer wants to see (a) which Implementation Group you are targeting, (b) a documented owner for the safeguard, and (c) a tooling or process artefact (config, scan output, ticket) that proves the safeguard runs on the cadence the control demands.

Within Protect, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control 6.1) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

1. Write a short policy stating intent, scope and named owner.
2. Encode it as a platform guardrail — SCP, Azure Policy initiative, Organisation Policy, or repository policy.
3. Wire a monitoring signal that catches drift (CSPM rule, SIEM rule, scheduled query, Workspace alert) and ticket it.
4. Review on a documented cadence and capture the review in the risk register or compliance tracker.

Operational checklist

• Establish. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Protect. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: user, identity management, enterprise.

Evidence to collect

• Identity Scan. IAM / IdP exports — Entra ID, Okta, IAM Identity Center, Workspace directory — showing accounts, roles, MFA state and last sign-in.
• Policy Document. A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.
• Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

Identity analytics (Okta, SailPoint, Access Analyzer) demonstrates least-privilege. Signed policy or standard documents the safeguard. Focus: Establish an Access Granting Process.

How it maps to other frameworks

Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.

• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.16 — Identity management
• ISO/IEC 27701:2025 A.3.8 — Identity management
• BSI C5:2020 IDM-02 — Granting and change of user accounts and access rights
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.5.1 — User Identification and Authentication
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC1.5 — Accountability for Internal Control Responsibilities

Related controls in CIS Controls v8

• Control 6.2 — Establish an Access Revoking Process
• Control 9.2 — Use DNS Filtering Services
• Control 6.8 — Define and Maintain Role-Based Access Control
• Control 6.7 — Centralize Access Control
• Control 5.6 — Centralize Account Management
• Control 5.2 — Use Unique Passwords

References

• Center for Internet Security — CIS Controls v8
• Catalogue identifier: Control 6.1

Topics: governance riskidentity accessidentity managementaccess reviewprivileged accesschange management