NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 CP-6 — Alternate Storage Site

What this control requires

Establish a geographically distinct alternate storage site with equivalent controls for secure backup storage/retrieval to ensure continuity during primary site disruptions. This control supports the Redundancy capability within the Contingency Planning family.

In plain English

Establish a geographically distinct alternate storage site with equivalent controls for secure backup storage/retrieval to ensure continuity during primary site disruptions. 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-6) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Cloud Posture

CSPM. Run Wiz / Prisma / Defender for Cloud / Security Command Center over every account; auto-ticket findings above your accepted-risk threshold.

Configuration Management

Policy-as-code. Codify the control as Service Control Policies (AWS), Azure Policy initiatives, or Organisation Policy (GCP) so the platform enforces what the document promises.

IaC. Gate Terraform / Pulumi / CloudFormation changes with Checkov / tfsec / OPA so misconfigurations never reach production.

Drift. Run a CSPM (Wiz / Prisma / Defender for Cloud / Security Command Center) over every account and route findings to a single risk register.

Network Security

AWS. VPC Flow Logs to S3, default-deny security groups, AWS Network Firewall for north-south, and Transit Gateway for hub-and-spoke segmentation.

Azure. NSGs with deny-by-default, Azure Firewall Premium with TLS inspection, Private Endpoints for PaaS, and Microsoft Defender for Cloud's secure score for drift.

GCP. VPC Service Controls perimeters around sensitive APIs, Cloud NGFW Enterprise for L7 inspection, Private Service Connect for managed services.

Operational checklist

• Security. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Configuration. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Network. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Storage. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Control. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, controls, alternate storage, configuration, storage site, primary site, alternate storage site, recovery.

Evidence to collect

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

Infrastructure posture tooling (AWS Config, Azure Policy, Nessus) verifies platform hardening. Focus: Alternate Storage Site.

Common pitfalls

• Treating CSPM findings as a backlog instead of a hot queue: findings older than the policy SLA accumulate until the auditor asks why.
• Manual cloud-console changes that never make it back to Terraform — drift accumulates until the next outage forces a reconciliation.
• Default-allow egress rules; East-West traffic with no segmentation; jump hosts on the public internet with password auth.

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.

• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.8.9 — System Backup - Cryptographic Protection
• BSI C5:2020 OPS-09 — Data Backup and Recovery - Storage

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

• Control CP-6(2) — Recovery Time And Recovery Point Objectives
• Control CP-6(1) — Separation From Primary Site
• Control CP-9(5) — Transfer To Alternate Storage Site
• Control CP-10(6) — Component Protection
• Control CP-11 — Alternate Communications Protocols
• Control CP-9(3) — Separate Storage For Critical Information

References

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

Topics: business continuitycloud postureconfiguration managementnetwork securitybackup recovery