NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 IA-5(13) — Expiration Of Cached Authenticators

What this control requires

Prohibiting the use of cached authenticators after an organization-defined time period to ensure the validity of authentication information when network access is unavailable. This control supports the Authentication Cache Management System capability within the Identification and Authentication family.

In plain English

Prohibiting the use of cached authenticators after an organization-defined time period to ensure the validity of authentication information when network access is unavailable. 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.

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 Identification and Authentication, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control IA-5(13)) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

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

• Access. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Information. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Security. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Network. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Review. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, information, authentication information, organization, system, time, identity, 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.

Identity analytics (Okta, SailPoint, Access Analyzer) demonstrates least-privilege. Focus: Expiration Of Cached Authenticators.

Common pitfalls

• 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 3.5.4 — Replay-Resistant Authentication
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.2 — Information security roles and responsibilities
• CIS Controls v8 9.2 — Use DNS Filtering Services
• BSI C5:2020 IDM-08 — Confidentiality of authentication information
• ISO/IEC 27701:2025 A.3.8 — Identity management

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

• Control IA-5(6) — Protection Of Authenticators
• Control IA-2(10) — Single Sign-On
• Control IA-4(1) — Prohibit Account Identifiers As Public Identifiers
• Control IA-5(5) — Change Authenticators Prior To Delivery
• Control IA-5(12) — Biometric Authentication Performance
• Control IA-2 — Identification And Authentication (Organizational Users)

References

• NIST Computer Security Resource Center — NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5
• Catalogue identifier: Control IA-5(13)

Topics: identity accessidentity managementaccess reviewprivileged accessnetwork security