What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on MA-4 Nonlocal Maintenance?

SSP MA-4 statement describing how nonlocal maintenance sessions are approved, monitored and use strong authentication; Remote maintenance session logs with approval tickets and MFA records; Vendor maintenance agreements with security clauses; System maintenance policy and approved maintenance windows; Maintenance ticket records with approvals and post change verification; Maintenance personnel access list with background check status.

What is the most common gap auditors find on MA-4?

Maintenance vendors lack signed confidentiality and security clauses

FedRAMP Moderate (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline) · MA - Maintenance

`MA-4` Nonlocal Maintenance

Approve and monitor nonlocal maintenance activities; use strong authentication.

Source: FedRAMP Moderate (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline), MA-4. 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 Moderate (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.

artefacts

held by a system

at each review

moderate

to go live

Identity provider / directory

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

Remote maintenance session logs with approval tickets and MFA records · Identity provider / directory
Maintenance ticket records with approvals and post change verification · Ticketing / ITSM
Remote maintenance session logs with MFA and supervision evidence · Identity provider / directory

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

none for this control

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

SSP MA-4 statement describing how nonlocal maintenance sessions are approved, monitored and use strong authentication · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Vendor maintenance agreements with security clauses · Vendor register / contract repository
System maintenance policy and approved maintenance windows · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Maintenance personnel access list with background check status · Policy repository / GRC workspace

First move

Start with the 3 of 7 artefacts that already live in a system (Identity provider / directory); keep the periodic reviews but log each one as a dated record with a named reviewer.

Common gaps auditors find

Maintenance vendors lack signed confidentiality and security clauses
Vendor engineers granted standing access rather than session based access
Remote maintenance sessions unmonitored after initial authentication
Maintenance tools not sanitised before removal from secure areas

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.

Build my evidence sheet

MA-3(3) Maintenance Tools | Prevent Unauthorized Removal (MA-3(3)) · MA-5 Maintenance Personnel