Security requirement
Incorporate the detection of the following unauthorized changes into the organizational incident response capability: [Organization-defined: changes].
Discussion
Integrating detection and response ensures that detected events are tracked, monitored, corrected, and available for historical purposes. Maintaining historical records is important to identify and discern adversary actions over an extended time period and for possible legal actions. Security-relevant changes include unauthorized changes to established configuration settings or the unauthorized elevation of system privileges. This requirement is sourced to a control tailored out of the SP 800-53B .13 moderate baseline in SP 800-171.
Tailoring decisions required
Resolve these values through the governing organization’s approved tailoring and risk-management process before declaring the requirement implemented.
Protection strategies supported
These classifications are carried from the official SP 800-172 OSCAL record and help explain the enhanced requirement’s defensive purpose.
Implementation perspective
Treat Integration of Detection and Response as an enhanced CUI protection outcome for elevated threat conditions that must be reflected in the system boundary, documented implementation, operational behavior, and assessment evidence. Pay particular attention to flaw remediation, malicious-code protection, monitoring, integrity, and trustworthy handling of CUI.
- Confirm the federal agency selected this enhanced requirement for the critical program or high-value asset and identify the CUI system components, services, users, and external connections in scope.
- Resolve every organization-defined parameter through an approved governance and tailoring process.
- Map each clause of the requirement to an accountable owner, implementation mechanism, and evidence source.
- Verify that inherited and shared implementations are supported by current provider evidence and responsibility boundaries.
- Collect evidence during normal operation and review changes, exceptions, and deficiencies on a risk-based cadence.
Questions to ask
- Which critical-program or high-value-asset CUI, data flows, users, and services are protected by this enhanced requirement?
- Which portions are implemented locally, inherited, shared, or not applicable, and what evidence supports that determination?
- Do the system security plan, deployed configuration, operating process, and assessment evidence tell the same story?
- What change, incident, or threshold should trigger reassessment?
Evidence and validation
- patch and remediation records
- malware protection configuration
- monitoring alerts and response records
- integrity validation and exception reports
Common failure patterns
- patch compliance hiding unsupported assets
- alerts generated without response ownership
- exceptions that never expire
- integrity monitoring excluding critical configurations
Assessment objectives and methods
Assessment objectives (1)
the detection of [Organization-defined: changes] are incorporated into the organizational incident response capability.
Examine
- System and information integrity policy
- system and information integrity procedures
- procedures addressing software, firmware, and information integrity
- procedures addressing incident response
- system design documentation
- system configuration settings and associated documentation
- incident response records
- audit records
- system security plan
- other relevant documents or records
Interview
- Personnel responsible for software, firmware, and/or information integrity
- personnel with information security responsibilities
- personnel with incident response responsibilities
Test
- Processes for incorporating the detection of unauthorized security-relevant changes into the incident response capability
- mechanisms supporting and/or implementing the incorporation of detection of unauthorized security-relevant changes into the incident response capability
- software, firmware, and information integrity verification tools
Source NIST SP 800-53 controls
These controls are referenced by the official SP 800-172 Rev. 3 OSCAL record. Open the corresponding control pages for complete control text, enhancements, D3FEND mappings, and related learning.
Authoritative sources
- NIST SP 800-172 Revision 3 official publication ↗
- NIST SP 800-172A Revision 3 official publication ↗
- NIST OSCAL Content release used for this import ↗
Bare Metal Cyber is an independent educational publisher and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NIST. The official publications, the responsible federal agency, and the governing contract or agreement determine applicability, tailoring, assessment depth, and required implementation.