NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 CA-6 — Authorization

What this control requires

Assigns senior officials to authorize systems and common controls, accepting risks and updating authorizations periodically based on continuous monitoring. This control supports the Authorization Management System capability within the Assessment, Authorization, and Monitoring family.

In plain English

Assigns senior officials to authorize systems and common controls, accepting risks and updating authorizations periodically based on continuous monitoring. 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 Assessment, Authorization, and Monitoring, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control CA-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.
• Authorize. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Review. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• System. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Identity. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, authorization, system, controls, identity, authorizations, assessment, review.

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.
• Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

Identity analytics (Okta, SailPoint, Access Analyzer) demonstrates least-privilege. Focus: Authorization.

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.

• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.16 — Identity management
• CIS Controls v8 6.1 — Establish an Access Granting Process
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.1.1 — Account Management
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC6.1 — Logical Access Controls
• ISO/IEC 27701:2025 A.3.8 — Identity management

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

• Control CA-3(6) — Transfer Authorizations
• Control CP-9(7) — Dual Authorization For Deletion Or Destruction
• Control SI-4(20) — Privileged Users
• Control CM-5(4) — Dual Authorization
• Control IA-4 — Identifier Management
• Control MA-5(5) — Non-System Maintenance

References

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

Topics: governance riskidentity accessidentity managementaccess reviewcontinuous monitoringprivileged access