NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 PS-9 — Position Descriptions

What this control requires

Incorporate security and privacy roles and responsibilities into organizational position descriptions to clarify the security or privacy duties associated with each role. This helps ensure that individuals understand their responsibilities and the related training requirements for security and privacy. This control supports the Organizational Role Descriptions capability within the Personnel Security family.

In plain English

Incorporate security and privacy roles and responsibilities into organizational position descriptions to clarify the security or privacy duties associated with each role. 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 Personnel Security, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control PS-9) 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.
• Security. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Review. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Identity. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Control. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, privacy, personnel, identity, review, position, capability, roles.

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: Position Descriptions.

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 3.9.1 — Personnel Screening
• CIS Controls v8 14.9 — Conduct Role-Specific Security Awareness and Skills Training
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.15 — Access control
• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) P5.1 — Data Subject Access to Personal Information
• ISO/IEC 27701:2025 A.3.8 — Identity management

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

• Control PS-6(3) — Post-Employment Requirements
• Control AT-3(3) — Practical Exercises
• Control AT-3 — Role-Based Training
• Control PS-5 — Personnel Transfer
• Control PS-6(2) — Classified Information Requiring Special Protection
• Control SA-3 — System Development Life Cycle

References

• NIST Computer Security Resource Center — NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5
• Catalogue identifier: Control PS-9

Topics: identity accessawareness trainingidentity managementaccess reviewprivileged accessprivacy management