NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 · Access Control
AC-6(7) on AWS
Privileged role without documented ownership — a published SQL (Athena) + Lambda query you can run against Amazon Athena over the supplied register and IAM inventory, with the evidence it needs, the settings you decide, and what a result does and does not establish.
Why this matters
Powerful access that nobody in the organization owns or has reviewed
Someone grants a colleague elevated access to solve an urgent problem. Years later the access is still there, the colleague has changed roles twice, and nobody can say who approved it or why. Organizations are expected to review privileged access periodically, but a review needs a list of who is accountable for each grant, and that list is usually the thing that was never written down.
Why this check earns its place. It reports the absence of a record rather than a technical fault. That is a different kind of finding, and it is the one that makes the periodic review possible at all.
- What it reads
- The organization's own register of administrative roles and who is accountable for each.
- What it reports
- Administrative roles with no named owner, no recorded reason for existing, or a review that is overdue.
See related public disclosures on the Signals page →
What this finds
Privileged role lacking a documented owner or justification, or overdue for its required review.
The requirement
The organization must review the privileges assigned to users at an organization-defined frequency to validate the need for such privileges, and reassign or remove privileges when no longer appropriate.
NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 — AC-6(7) (Least Privilege | Review of User Privileges).
NIST requires periodic validation of privilege need. Whether that is evidenced by an owner field, a ticket reference, or a signed attestation is an organization-defined implementation choice. A missing field is evidence about the record, not proof about the access.
How this maps to the CISA performance goals
The Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals are a voluntary baseline published by CISA — the U.S. federal agency for critical-infrastructure cybersecurity — written for organizations too small to employ security staff. This control speaks to:
- 3.H — Implement the principles of least privilege
A privileged role nobody owns cannot be justified as the minimum necessary. - 3.G — Administrators maintain separate user and privileged accounts (partial — see note)
Related to separating administrative identity, but the pack checks ownership of the role, not whether admins hold a second account.
See the full coverage map, including the goals no query can answer →
Evidence this query needs
Privileged role register privileged_role_register.csv
Defines which roles your organisation treats as privileged, who owns each one, and how often it must be reviewed. Cloud platforms know which roles exist; only you know which ones matter and who is accountable for them.
Minimum fields: role_name, platform, privilege_classification
Three fields make the staleness and MFA checks work. The ownership fields are what make AC-6(7) answerable at all — without them that check has nothing to test against.
The query
Published as ac-6-7-unowned-role.aws.sql. Reads privileged_role_register (supplied), iam_role_inventory (Config export). Requires: athena:StartQueryExecution; config:SelectAggregateResourceConfig.
Before this returns anything,
iam_role_inventory (Config export) has to be reaching Amazon Athena over the supplied register and IAM inventory, and privileged_role_register (supplied) has to be landed there. If not, the query reports nothing found — which looks
exactly like nothing wrong. What has to be switched on first →
-- AC-6(7) -- privileged roles missing ownership or overdue for review
SELECT
r.role_name,
i.arn,
r.documented_owner,
r.business_justification,
r.last_review_date,
coalesce(r.review_cycle_days, 90) AS review_cycle_days,
date_diff('day', r.last_review_date, current_date) AS days_since_review,
CASE
WHEN r.documented_owner IS NULL OR r.documented_owner = ''
THEN 'no documented owner'
WHEN r.business_justification IS NULL OR r.business_justification = ''
THEN 'no business justification'
ELSE 'review overdue'
END AS gap,
'AWS IAM' AS source_system
FROM privileged_role_register r
LEFT JOIN iam_role_inventory i
ON lower(i.role_name) = lower(r.role_name)
WHERE r.platform = 'aws'
AND (
r.documented_owner IS NULL OR r.documented_owner = ''
OR r.business_justification IS NULL OR r.business_justification = ''
OR r.last_review_date IS NULL
OR date_diff('day', r.last_review_date, current_date)
> coalesce(r.review_cycle_days, 90)
)
ORDER BY days_since_review DESC;Open this pack on AWS to adjust the settings and download it →
The interactive version opens on AWS — the platform on this page — even if your environment profile does not list it.
Settings you decide
NIST states the objective and leaves these to your organization. The interactive version of this pack applies them to the query for you.
- Default review cycle (days) (default 90)
- Applied to roles whose register entry does not specify its own review cycle.
Running it continuously
EventBridge Scheduler → Lambda → Security Hub
Schedule: EventBridge Scheduler, rate(12 hours)
Compute: Lambda (Python 3.12), 60s timeout
Step 1: Query the register joined to the Config export
Step 2: BatchImportFindings -> Security Hub
Severity label: MEDIUM
RelatedRequirements: NIST.800-53.r5 AC-6(7)
Idempotency: Id = sha256(role_name + gap)Including the gap in the Id means a role that later fails for a different reason raises a distinct finding rather than silently reusing the old one.
What a result does not prove
A missing field is evidence about the completeness of the register, not proof that the access itself is inappropriate. Documentation may exist outside the queried source.
Validation status for this platform: Not tenant-validated. Structure, query generation, and preflight are covered by the project's automated test suites. This pack has not been executed against a live tenant, account, or index. Validate it in a non-production scope before relying on any result.
Before you act on a result
- Is the ownership evidence recorded somewhere this query does not read?
- Was this an emergency assignment following a separate documented process?
- Does the role remain necessary in its current form?
- Who will attest to this privilege at the next review cycle?
Common questions
- How do I check for privileged role without documented ownership in AWS?
- Run the published SQL (Athena) + Lambda query on this page against Amazon Athena over the supplied register and IAM inventory. It reads privileged_role_register (supplied), iam_role_inventory (Config export) and reports: Privileged role lacking a documented owner or justification, or overdue for its required review.
- What permissions are needed to run this AWS query?
- athena:StartQueryExecution; config:SelectAggregateResourceConfig.
- What evidence does AC-6(7) need that AWS cannot produce?
- Privileged role register (privileged_role_register.csv). Defines which roles your organisation treats as privileged, who owns each one, and how often it must be reviewed. Cloud platforms know which roles exist; only you know which ones matter and who is accountable for them. At minimum it must carry: role_name, platform, privilege_classification.
- Does a result from this query mean the control has failed?
- A missing field is evidence about the completeness of the register, not proof that the access itself is inappropriate. Documentation may exist outside the queried source.
Terms used on this page
- NIST SP 800-53the U.S. federal catalogue of security requirements
- The catalogue of security and privacy requirements published by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a U.S. federal agency. U.S. government systems are measured against it, and many private organizations adopt it voluntarily. Each requirement has an identifier such as AC-2. Official source →
- CISACybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
- The U.S. federal agency responsible for national critical-infrastructure cybersecurity. Its publications are works of the U.S. government and are free to use. Official source →
- CPGCross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals
- A voluntary baseline of security practices published by the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, written specifically for organizations too small to employ security staff. It is a short, plainly written starting list rather than a full standard. Official source →
- not tenant-validatednever executed against real data
- The check has passed the project's automated tests for structure and syntax, but has never been run against real data anywhere. Test it in a safe scope before relying on any result.