NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 AU-6(6) — Correlation With Physical Monitoring

What this control requires

Correlates audit records with physical access monitoring to identify suspicious activity, aiding investigations with combined logical and physical data. This control supports the Physical-Logical Correlation Tool capability within the Audit and Accountability family.

In plain English

Correlates audit records with physical access monitoring to identify suspicious activity, aiding investigations with combined logical and physical data. In practice, this means you can prove you access management-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

SP 800-53 is the catalogue every U.S. federal authorisation (FedRAMP, FISMA, CMMC) and most regulated industries point at. A missing control surfaces as a Plan of Action & Milestones (POA&M) item that an Authorizing Official must approve before the Authority To Operate is granted or renewed.

This control is rated high. Auditors expect a named owner, a remediation SLA, and a tooling artefact that evidences continuous operation.

What an auditor looks for

A 3PAO (FedRAMP) or Independent Assessor (NIST RMF) tests against NIST SP 800-53A assessment procedures. For each control they expect a documented implementation that addresses every assessment objective (Examine, Interview, Test) and an implementation summary in the System Security Plan.

Within Audit and Accountability, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control AU-6(6)) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

1. Write a short policy stating intent, scope and named owner.
2. Encode it as a platform guardrail — SCP, Azure Policy initiative, Organisation Policy, or repository policy.
3. Wire a monitoring signal that catches drift (CSPM rule, SIEM rule, scheduled query, Workspace alert) and ticket it.
4. Review on a documented cadence and capture the review in the risk register or compliance tracker.

Operational checklist

• Access. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Audit. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Data. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Physical. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Review. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, records, audit records, identity, review, capability, correlation, accountability.

Evidence to collect

• Identity Scan. IAM / IdP exports — Entra ID, Okta, IAM Identity Center, Workspace directory — showing accounts, roles, MFA state and last sign-in.

Identity analytics (Okta, SailPoint, Access Analyzer) demonstrates least-privilege. Focus: Correlation With Physical Monitoring.

How it maps to other frameworks

Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.

• CIS Controls v8 6.7 — Centralize Access Control
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.33 — Protection of records
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.1.7 — Least Privilege - Privileged Functions
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC6.1 — Logical Access Controls
• BSI C5:2020 IDM-06 — Privileged access rights

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

• Control AU-6(9) — Correlation With Information From Nontechnical Sources
• Control AU-10(2) — Validate Binding Of Information Producer Identity
• Control AU-3(1) — Additional Audit Information
• Control AU-9(6) — Read-Only Access
• Control AU-16(2) — Sharing Of Audit Information
• Control AU-10(3) — Chain Of Custody

References

• NIST Computer Security Resource Center — NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5
• Catalogue identifier: Control AU-6(6)

Topics: identity accesslogging monitoringidentity managementaccess reviewprivileged accesscontinuous monitoring