Access Control

The financial entities referred to in Article 16(1) of Regulation (EU) 2022/2554 shall develop, document, and implement procedures for the control of logical and physical access and shall enforce, monitor, and periodically review those procedures. Those procedures shall contain the following elements of control of logical and physical access:

(a) access rights to information assets, ICT assets, and their supported functions, and to critical locations of operation of the financial entity, are managed on a need-to-know, need-to-use and least privileges basis, including for remote and emergency access;

(b) user accountability, which ensures that users can be identified for the actions performed in the ICT systems;

(c) account management procedures to grant, change, or revoke access rights for user and generic accounts, including generic administrator accounts;

(d) authentication methods that are commensurate to the classification referred to in Article 30(1) and to the overall risk profile of ICT assets, and which are based on leading practices;

(e) access rights are periodically reviewed and are withdrawn when no longer required.

For the purposes of point (c), the financial entity shall assign privileged, emergency, and administrator access on a need-to-use or an ad-hoc basis for all ICT systems, and shall be logged in accordance with Article 34, first paragraph, point (f).

For the purposes of point (d), financial entities shall use strong authentication methods that are based on leading practices for remote access to the financial entities’ network, for privileged access, and for access to ICT assets supporting critical or important functions that are publicly available.