Control statement
Implement the indicated fail-safe procedures when the indicated failures occur: [Organization-defined: organization-defined list of failure conditions and associated fail-safe procedures].
Discussion
Failure conditions include the loss of communications among critical system components or between system components and operational facilities. Fail-safe procedures include alerting operator personnel and providing specific instructions on subsequent steps to take. Subsequent steps may include doing nothing, reestablishing system settings, shutting down processes, restarting the system, or contacting designated organizational personnel.
Organization-defined parameters
These values must be resolved through the organization’s tailoring and governance process. Bracketed parameter references in the control text identify where a decision is required.
From control text to operational evidence
Use Fail-safe Procedures as a testable risk decision. Translate the official statement into accountable people, repeatable processes, configured technology, and evidence that demonstrates the outcome over time. In this family, pay particular attention to flaw remediation, malicious-code protection, monitoring, integrity, and trustworthy information handling.
Implementation workflow
- Define the control boundary, responsible owner, inherited portions, and systems or processes in scope.
- Resolve each organization-defined parameter before declaring the control implemented.
- Document how the implementation satisfies every clause of the official control statement.
- Collect evidence as a normal byproduct of operation rather than only before an assessment.
- Review exceptions, changes, and monitoring results on a risk-based cadence.
Evidence examples
- patch and remediation records
- malware protection configuration
- monitoring alerts and response records
- integrity validation and exception reports
Common failure patterns
- patch compliance hides unsupported assets
- alerts generated without response ownership
- exceptions never expire
- integrity monitoring excludes critical configurations
Questions practitioners should ask
- What risk decision is this control intended to support in this system?
- Which parts are implemented locally, inherited, shared, or not applicable—and what evidence supports that decision?
- Do the documented narrative, deployed configuration, operating process, and collected evidence agree?
- What event or threshold requires the implementation to be reviewed or changed?
Assessment objectives and methods
Show the assessment objective
[Organization-defined: fail-safe procedures] are implemented when [Organization-defined: list of failure conditions] occur.
Examine
- System and information integrity policy
- system and information integrity procedures
- documentation addressing fail-safe procedures for the system
- system design documentation
- system configuration settings and associated documentation
- list of security safeguards protecting the system memory from unauthorized code execution
- system audit records
- system security plan
- other relevant documents or records
Interview
- Organizational personnel responsible for fail-safe procedures
- organizational personnel with information security responsibilities
- system/network administrators
- system developer
Test
- Organizational fail-safe procedures
- automated mechanisms supporting and/or implementing fail-safe procedures
Related controls
These relationships come from the official OSCAL catalog. They indicate useful dependencies or context, not automatic inheritance or equivalence.
Authoritative sources
Bare Metal Cyber is an independent educational publisher and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NIST. Official control requirements and interpretations remain with NIST and the responsible authorizing organization.