EvidenceSheet
FedRAMP High (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline) · SC - System and Communications Protection

SC-1 Policy and Procedures

Develop, document, disseminate and review the policy for system and communications protection, and its procedures, on the FedRAMP-defined cadence: policy at least annually under High and at least every three years under Moderate, procedures at least annually and after significant changes under both.

Source: FedRAMP High (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline), SC-1. The statement above is our statement of the clause, read from the published text and cited so you can check it against the official text, not the instrument verbatim. Open FedRAMP High (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline) in the compliance library.

A FedRAMP baseline is a subset of NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5, enhancements included.

6
artefacts
1
held by a system
0
at each review
hard
to go live
Policy repository / GRC workspace
where the evidence lives
teal = a system already holds it · olive = produced at each review. To go live: easy when half or more of the artefacts are already held by a system, moderate from a quarter to a half, hard below a quarter.

These are the artefacts auditors commonly ask for on this requirement, our guidance rather than text from the standard. Your assessor decides what is sufficient in your context, and asks for samples across the period when a report covers one.

system holds itEvidence a system already holds

  • Denial of service protection configuration and capacity test results · Source control / CI pipeline

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

  • SSP SC-1 statement naming the system and communications protection policy owner and its review cadence (policy yearly for High, at least every three years for Moderate; procedures yearly for both) · Policy repository / GRC workspace
  • System and communications protection policy with review approval · Policy repository / GRC workspace
  • Network segmentation diagrams with VLAN and zone mapping · Policy repository / GRC workspace
  • Boundary protection architecture with firewall and proxy rule documentation · Policy repository / GRC workspace
  • Cryptographic standards specifying approved algorithms and key lengths · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Mostly documents and reviews. Pull the 1 system-held artefact from your Source control / CI pipeline on a schedule; put the documents under version control with an owner and review date, and log each review as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Do this for your whole sheet

Paste the rows you run your controls from and get this mapping for every control at once, with the periodic-review ones flagged and a first move per row. No account for the first run.

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SA-22 Unsupported System Components (SA-22) · SC-2 Separation of System and User Functionality