To audit employee and contractor access to company source code, reconcile who each account belongs to, how it receives access, what code and related systems it can reach, and whether that access is still needed. A user list shows identities; a permissions report shows a snapshot of rights; neither alone establishes that access is appropriate or who approved it. Review both, remediate excess access, and verify the resulting state.
What a source-code access audit should establish
A useful review answers four questions for each human or machine identity: who owns it, what it can access, how it got that access, and whether the access matches current work. Include employees, contractors, guests, service identities, bots, and credentials such as personal access tokens (PATs) where applicable. Keep human accounts distinct from non-human identities so each machine account has an accountable owner.
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Check more than repository permissions. Depending on the platform, effective access can come from organization or collection roles, project membership, direct grants, group membership or rules, repository permissions, and build or deployment resources. Record the grant path as well as the final level of access; otherwise, a right inherited through a group can be missed or remain after a direct grant is removed.
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List the code-hosting organizations or collections, projects, repositories, and production-critical code in scope. Name the engineering owner accountable for the code and an independent reviewer. Set the review date and define whether the review covers contractors, guests, service accounts, bots, deploy keys, PATs, pipelines, and service connections. Define what read, write, administrative, and deployment access mean in the platform being reviewed.
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For Azure DevOps Services, first confirm whether auditing is enabled. Microsoft says auditing is off by default, is available only for organizations backed by Microsoft Entra ID, and is currently documented as public preview. See Microsoft’s Azure DevOps audit documentation. These controls and labels apply to Azure DevOps Services, not automatically to other code-hosting platforms or self-hosted installations.
Build and reconcile the identity list
Collect a dated roster from the source-code platform with account state, identity type, group memberships, and relationship owner. Reconcile it against the authoritative employee and contractor directory and engagement records. Check guests and external collaborators explicitly, and identify accounts that have no current sponsor or owner.
In Azure DevOps Services, organization management includes direct user assignments and group rules, so inspect both individual assignments and group-derived access. Microsoft’s organization management documentation describes these management paths. A roster of named users is not enough if access is inherited through groups.
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Map effective access across repositories and related systems
For each identity, record the organization or collection, project, repository or resource, permission level, grant path, business justification, and accountable approver or owner. Include exceptional individual privileges, administrative capabilities, token owners and scopes, and rights used by build and deployment systems.
In Azure Repos, permissions can be set for all repositories in a project or for an individual repository. Microsoft provides a repository permissions report that can be requested for one repository or all repositories in a project. Treat it as a dated snapshot: trace unusual or broad rights to the group or direct grant that creates them, and check project and organization-level access as well.
Use a consistent comparison for each access record:
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- Identity status: active employee, current contractor, guest, service identity, or departed or expired relationship.
- Scope: organization or collection, project, all repositories, individual repository, or build and deployment resource.
- Grant path: direct assignment, group membership or rule, inherited permission, or exceptional individual grant.
- Privilege: read, contribute or write, administration, token, pipeline, or service-connection capability.
- Need and ownership: business reason, approving manager or code owner, and an accountable owner for machine identities.
- Evidence and timing: snapshot date, relevant event date, reviewer, remediation record, and verification date.
Confirm access against current work and lifecycle status
Ask each manager or code owner to affirm whether the person still needs access and which project or repositories are required. For contractors, compare the access with the engagement dates and named sponsor. Investigate accounts with no owner or justification, access broader than the work requires, rights that persisted after a project ended, and unusual elevated privileges.
A lack of recent login activity is a reason to investigate, not proof that access is unnecessary. Infrequent work and automation can have legitimate access requirements. Review the purpose and owner of the access rather than relying on activity alone.
Microsoft’s Azure DevOps security guidance recommends reviewing and revoking special permissions granted to individuals and regularly reviewing and revoking administrator PATs. Apply the guidance to the corresponding Azure DevOps controls, and adapt the review to the token and privilege model of other platforms. See Microsoft’s Azure DevOps security recommendations.
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Remove excess access and verify offboarding
Reduce or remove unneeded repository, project, group, and administrative rights. When an employee leaves or a contractor’s engagement ends, coordinate directory disablement or removal with source-platform cleanup. Check for alternate paths that could preserve access, including group membership, guest accounts, tokens, and service credentials. Record who made each change, then use a fresh permissions view or report to verify the effective post-change state.
Azure DevOps offboarding has platform-specific details. Microsoft advises disabling or deleting Microsoft Entra user accounts in the offboarding workflow, while also calling for access-policy review and individual-permission cleanup. Do not interpret that wording as a general instruction to leave usable platform access intact: validate the effective Azure DevOps access state after directory changes and remove platform access as needed. Microsoft’s user-removal documentation also calls out checking team memberships and owned pipelines or service connections before removal, where those apply.
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Retain the dated permissions export or report, reconciled identity roster, manager or code-owner decisions, exceptions, remediation records, and post-change verification. For each exception, record an owner and expiry date. Protect the evidence because it contains sensitive access information.
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Azure DevOps audit events provide evidence of changes and activity, not a verdict that current access is justified. The events include details such as actor, IP address, timestamp, area, category, and description, and can include permission changes and audit-log access or downloads. Microsoft documents a 90-day retention period, after which events are deleted; export them or configure audit streaming if you need longer retention. Check current product documentation because platform behavior and preview status can change. Audit logging does not replace comparing current effective permissions with business need.
Set a scheduled review cadence based on code sensitivity, workforce and contractor turnover, and the scale of access changes. No universal interval is established by the cited platform guidance. Add event-triggered checks after offboarding, role changes, project completion, or other material changes rather than relying only on the calendar.
Quick Recap
What the review record should contain
- Review owner, independent reviewer, date, and systems and repositories in scope.
- Identity roster reconciled to employee and contractor records, including guests and machine identities.
- Effective permissions, scope, grant path, and business justification for each identity.
- Approvals, exceptions with owners and expiry dates, and identified access gaps or excesses.
- Remediation details and a dated check showing that removed access is no longer effective.
- Relevant audit-event evidence retained for the period required by the organization.
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