NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 RA-3(2) — Use Of All-Source Intelligence

What this control requires

Leverage information from all intelligence sources--open, technical, human, and environmental--to assess risks from suppliers, processes, people, and systems throughout development and delivery phases. This control supports the Intelligence Integration Module capability within the Risk Assessment family.

In plain English

Leverage information from all intelligence sources--open, technical, human, and environmental--to assess risks from suppliers, processes, people, and systems throughout development and delivery phases. In practice, this means you can prove you policy 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 Risk Assessment, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control RA-3(2)) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Policy Management

Docs. Keep each policy in version-controlled Markdown alongside the code that implements it; ship a signed PDF snapshot at each annual review and link the SHA into the SoA.

Operational checklist

• Policy. 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.
• Human. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Environmental. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: management, information, controls, source, assessment, sources, capability, systems.

Evidence to collect

• Vendor Risk Management. vendor_risk_management evidence
• Policy Document. A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.

Third-party risk management evidence (assessments, contracts, due diligence) shows supplier oversight. Signed policy or standard documents the safeguard. Focus: Use Of All-Source Intelligence.

Common pitfalls

• Policies that no engineer has read; the version in Confluence drifts from the version that's actually being enforced.

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.5.19 — Information security in supplier relationships
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.11.1 — Risk Assessment

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

• Control SR-6 — Supplier Assessments And Reviews
• Control IR-6(3) — Supply Chain Coordination
• Control PM-30(1) — Suppliers Of Critical Or Mission-Essential Items
• Control SA-12 — Supply Chain Protection
• Control RA-2 — Security Categorization
• Control SR-6(1) — Testing And Analysis

References

• NIST Computer Security Resource Center — NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5
• Catalogue identifier: Control RA-3(2)

Topics: governance riskvendor riskvendor managementsupply chain securityenvironmental controlspolicy management