NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 CP-2(7) — Coordinate With External Service Providers

What this control requires

Coordinate contingency plan with external service providers to ensure all contingency requirements are met, aligning expectations for third-party-dependent functions. This control supports the Integration capability within the Contingency Planning family.

In plain English

Coordinate contingency plan with external service providers to ensure all contingency requirements are met, aligning expectations for third-party-dependent functions. In practice, this means you can prove you security 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 Contingency Planning, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control CP-2(7)) 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

• Security. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Chain. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Control. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Plan. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Contingency Plan. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, service, functions, external service providers, contingency plan, capability, requirements, security.

Evidence to collect

• Vendor Risk Management. vendor_risk_management evidence

Third-party risk management evidence (assessments, contracts, due diligence) shows supplier oversight. Focus: Coordinate With External Service Providers.

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.5.20 — Addressing information security within supplier agreements
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.11.1 — Risk Assessment
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC9.2 — Vendor Risk Management
• BSI C5:2020 OIS-03 — Interfaces and Dependencies
• CIS Controls v8 15.6 — Monitor Service Providers

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

• Control SA-9(2) — Identification Of Functions, Ports, Protocols, And Services
• Control SC-7(19) — Block Communication From Non-Organizationally Configured Hosts
• Control SA-5(2) — Security-Relevant External System Interfaces
• Control SA-9 — External System Services
• Control SA-9(3) — Establish And Maintain Trust Relationship With Providers
• Control SA-13 — Trustworthiness

References

• NIST Computer Security Resource Center — NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5
• Catalogue identifier: Control CP-2(7)

Topics: vendor riskvendor managementsupply chain securitythird party monitoring