Control statement
Employ the following Operations Security (OPSEC) controls to protect supply chain-related information for the system, system component, or system service: [Organization-defined: OPSEC controls].
Discussion
Supply chain OPSEC expands the scope of OPSEC to include suppliers and potential suppliers. OPSEC is a process that includes identifying critical information, analyzing friendly actions related to operations and other activities to identify actions that can be observed by potential adversaries, determining indicators that potential adversaries might obtain that could be interpreted or pieced together to derive information in sufficient time to cause harm to organizations, implementing safeguards or countermeasures to eliminate or reduce exploitable vulnerabilities and risk to an acceptable level, and considering how aggregated information may expose users or specific uses of the supply chain. Supply chain information includes user identities; uses for systems, system components, and system services; supplier identities; security and privacy requirements; system and component configurations; supplier processes; design specifications; and testing and evaluation results. Supply chain OPSEC may require organizations to withhold mission or business information from suppliers and may include the use of intermediaries to hide the end use or users of systems, system components, or system services.
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 Supply Chain Operations Security 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 cybersecurity supply-chain governance, provenance, supplier risk, component authenticity, and dependency resilience.
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
- supplier inventories and criticality ratings
- contract security clauses
- provenance and authenticity records
- supplier monitoring and incident records
Common failure patterns
- tier-one vendors assessed while sub-tier dependencies are ignored
- contracts lack evidence and notification obligations
- open-source and service dependencies omitted
- supplier risk reviews occur only at onboarding
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: OPSEC controls] are employed to protect supply chain-related information for the system, system component, or system service.
Examine
- Supply chain risk management plan
- supply chain risk management procedures
- system and services acquisition policy
- system and services acquisition procedures
- procedures addressing supply chain protection
- list of OPSEC controls to be employed
- solicitation documentation
- acquisition documentation
- acquisition contracts for the system, system component, or system service
- records of all-source intelligence analyses
- system security plan
- privacy plan
- other relevant documents or records
Interview
- Organizational personnel with acquisition responsibilities
- organizational personnel with information security and privacy responsibilities
- organizational personnel with OPSEC responsibilities
- organizational personnel with supply chain risk management responsibilities
Test
- Organizational processes for defining and employing OPSEC safeguards
- mechanisms supporting and/or implementing the definition and employment of OPSEC safeguards
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.