NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 SR-1 — Policy And Procedures

What this control requires

Develop, document, and disseminate a supply chain risk management policy addressing purpose, scope, roles, responsibilities, and compliance. Procedures should facilitate policy implementation and be updated regularly or when specific events occur. Designate an official to manage the development and dissemination of the policy and procedures. Ensure the policy is consistent with applicable laws, directives, and guidelines. This control supports the Supply Chain Management, Policy Development capability within the Supply Chain Risk Management family.

In plain English

Develop, document, and disseminate a supply chain risk management policy addressing purpose, scope, roles, responsibilities, and compliance. In practice, this means you can prove you policy procedures-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 Supply Chain Risk Management, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control SR-1) 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.

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.

Operational checklist

• Policy. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Security. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Consistent. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Chain. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Control. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: procedures, management, compliance, events, capability, purpose, policy, roles.

Evidence to collect

• Policy Document. A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.

Signed policy or standard documents the safeguard. Focus: Policy And Procedures.

Common pitfalls

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

• HIPAA (45 CFR Part 164) 164.308(a)(5)(ii)(B) — Security Awareness, Training, and Tools - Protection from Malicious Software
• NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.13.2 — Recategorized as NCO
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.8.29 — Security testing in development and acceptance
• BSI C5:2020 SP-01 — Documentation, communication and provision of policies and instructions

Related controls in NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

• Control PL-1 — Policy And Procedures
• Control SR-3 — Supply Chain Controls And Processes
• Control SR-4(2) — Track And Trace
• Control SR-2(1) — Establish Scrm Team
• Control CP-1 — Policy And Procedures
• Control SI-1 — Policy And Procedures

References

• NIST Computer Security Resource Center — NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5
• Catalogue identifier: Control SR-1

Topics: governance riskpolicy managementsecure developmentsupply chain security