Identify and document access requirements for secure systems

Access requirements control who accesses your systems, what actions they can perform, and when they can perform them. Organizations face dozens of regulations, such as HIPAA, PCI, GDPR and SOC 2, each with specific access control requirements.

Why define access requirements

Defining access requirements addresses the following challenges:

• Navigate complex regulatory landscape: Organizations must comply with multiple, sometimes overlapping, regulations based on their industry and geographic locations. Without documented requirements, teams struggle to understand which controls apply to their systems, leading to compliance gaps that expose the organization to legal and financial penalties.

• Prevent security control gaps across systems: When teams implement access controls without central requirements, each system develops its own security model. The inconsistency creates gaps where some systems have strong controls while others remain vulnerable, giving attackers targets that bypass otherwise secure infrastructure.

• Maintain compliance during audits: Security auditors require organizations to demonstrate that access controls align with applicable regulations and standards. Without documented requirements and their mapping to specific controls, organizations cannot prove compliance, resulting in failed audits and remediation mandates.

• Scale access management across growing infrastructure: As organizations add systems and services, manually managing access requirements becomes unsustainable. Without a requirements framework that scales with infrastructure growth, teams cannot maintain consistent security controls, and access management becomes increasingly chaotic.

What are access requirements

Every system you interact with today includes a set of access requirements. These requirements define who can access the system, what actions they can take, and under what conditions they can access the system. Access requirements come from several sources, including:

• Industry regulations that define role-based access controls or separation of duties requirements (PCI, HIPAA).

• Local, federal, or international regulatory standards that define data privacy and protection (CCPA, Sarbanes-Oxley, GDPR).

• Current best operational practices that define security controls (SOC 2, NIST, ISO 27001).

  

When you understand which regulations and standards apply to your organization, you can begin to identify the specific access requirements that you need to implement for your systems and teams.

Identify regulations and map controls to your systems

Building your access requirements framework requires a systematic approach. The following steps will help you understand all necessary regulations and implement the right controls.

Identify applicable regulations

Start by identifying the regulations and standards that apply to your organization from both an industry and geographic perspective. These regulations often align with specific security practices, such as NIST SP 800-53 for access control.

The following are examples of common regulations and standards that may apply to your organization:

• Industry regulations: PCI-DSS for payment processing, HIPAA for healthcare data, or SOX for publicly traded companies.
• Geographic standards: GDPR for European data, CCPA for California residents, or other regional privacy laws.
• Security frameworks: SOC 2, ISO 27001, or NIST SP 800-53 for operational best practices.

Your organization may need to comply with multiple regulations depending on your industry and geographic location.

Document specific access controls

Once you have identified and collected the requirements that apply to your organization, you need to document those requirements and begin mapping the specific access controls to your systems and teams. Documenting these requirements helps you ensure that you are meeting the necessary regulations and standards.

You should also designate a group responsible for staying up-to-date on changes to regulations and standards that may affect your access requirements. When regulations, standards, or best practices change, you need to update your access requirements accordingly. The group responsible for staying up-to-date on regulation updates evangelizes the need for strong security practices across your organization.

Documenting and maintaining your access requirements helps you ensure that you can meet audit requirements, such as those for SOC 2 or ISO 27001. Auditors will want to see that you have a clear understanding of your access requirements and that you are implementing the necessary controls to meet those requirements. Assign ownership and maintain updates

Plan for scalable access management

As you begin defining your access requirements, also think about how you can manage these controls at scale. HashiCorp's Terraform helps you deploy policies as code such as policies for Vault or Sentinel to manage access controls across your systems.

Project infragraph, announced at HashiConf 2025, is a real-time infrastructure graph that provides visibility into your infrastructure and its relationships. By understanding relationships between your resources, you can better define and manage access requirements.

You can apply to our private beta for project infragraph here.

HashiCorp resources:

• Learn Terraform with the Terraform tutorials and read the Terraform documentation
• Learn Vault with the Vault tutorials and read the Vault documentation
• Control access with Vault policies for fine-grained permissions
• Enforce organizational standards with Policy as code using Sentinel
• Manage cloud permissions with Terraform IAM policies
• Understand infrastructure relationships with Project Infragraph for better access control

External resources:

• NIST cybersecurity framework covers security and privacy control families
• Define, update, share, and enforce policies using code explains policy automation
• Understanding separation of duties walks through access control principles

Next steps

Following these documents in order ensures a logical progression through the key concepts and best practices, helping you build a strong foundation to build your identity and access management program.

• Define access requirements (this document)
• Grant least privilege
• Create permissions and guardrails
• Centralize identity management
• Implement strong authentication methods
• Use dynamic credentials
• Manage access lifecycle

In this section of Identity and access management, you learned the importance of identifying and collecting access requirements from common sources such as industry and regulatory standards. Identity and access management is part of the Secure systems pillar.