ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.8.2 — Privileged access rights

What this control requires

The allocation and use of privileged access rights shall be restricted and managed.

In plain English

The allocation and use of privileged access rights shall be restricted and managed. In practice, this means you can prove you management management-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

ISO 27001 certification depends on showing each Annex A control is either implemented or explicitly justified for exclusion in the Statement of Applicability (SoA). Certification bodies sample controls during surveillance audits, and a missing SoA entry — or implementation that doesn't match the SoA wording — is a finding.

This control is rated high. Auditors expect a named owner, a remediation SLA, and a tooling artefact that evidences continuous operation.

What an auditor looks for

An ISO 27001 lead auditor looks for: (1) an SoA entry covering the control with justification, (2) a documented procedure or policy implementing it, (3) records that prove the procedure runs (logs, tickets, training records) and (4) management-review evidence that effectiveness is monitored.

Within Technological controls, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Annex A A.8.2) 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

• Management. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Identity. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Access. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, rights, access rights.

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.
• Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

IAM analytics (Okta, SailPoint) show privileged roles are restricted and reviewed.

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 27701:2025 A.3.9 — Access rights
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC6.2 — Access Provisioning
• BSI C5:2020 IDM-01 — Policy for user accounts and access rights
• NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 AC-6(6) — Privileged Access By Non-Organizational Users
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.1.7 — Least Privilege - Privileged Functions

Related controls in ISO/IEC 27001:2022

• Annex A A.8.23 — Web filtering
• Annex A A.5.18 — Access rights
• Annex A A.5.16 — Identity management
• Annex A A.5.33 — Protection of records
• Annex A A.5.2 — Information security roles and responsibilities
• Annex A A.6.1 — Screening

References

• ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 27 — ISO/IEC 27001:2022
• Catalogue identifier: Annex A A.8.2

Topics: identity accessprivileged accessidentity managementaccess review