NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 SC-26 — Decoys : iCompaas Support

NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5·Control SC-26·high·Component: System and Communications Protection

What this control requires

Include components within organizational systems that are specifically designed to be the target of malicious attacks for detecting, deflecting, and analyzing such attacks. Decoys, such as honeypots, honeynets, or deception nets, attract adversaries and divert attacks away from operational systems. Proper isolation measures are required to ensure that any deflected malicious code does not infect organizational systems. Consultation with the Office of the General Counsel may be necessary before deployment. This control supports the Decoy or Honeypot System capability within the System and Communications Protection family.
— NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5, Control SC-26

In plain English

Include components within organizational systems that are specifically designed to be the target of malicious attacks for detecting, deflecting, and analyzing such attacks. In practice, this means you can prove you security system-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 System and Communications Protection, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control SC-26) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Secure Development

Pipeline. Require code review, SAST (Semgrep / Snyk Code), SCA (Dependabot / Renovate), secret-scanning and IaC scanning in the merge pipeline.

Branch protection. Protected branches enforce reviews, signed commits and passing CI before merge; document the protection rules as the control evidence.

Code Review Testing

Pipeline. Require at least one human reviewer plus passing CI (lint, type, unit, security scan) before merge — protected branches enforce this.

Operational checklist

Security. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
Review. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
Protection. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
System. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
Control. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
Scope: system, application, protection, review, components, capability, systems, malicious code.

Evidence to collect

Code Repo Scan. Source-control evidence — branch protection, required reviewers, CI status, SCA / SAST reports.

Source control pipelines (GitHub, GitLab) enforce SDLC guardrails. Focus: Decoys.

Common pitfalls

CI security checks set to warn-only; the merge button is faster than the security feedback.

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.

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

References

NIST Computer Security Resource Center — NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5
Catalogue identifier: Control SC-26

Topics: application securitysecure developmentcode review testingdevsecops

NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 SC-26 — Decoys