What evidence do auditors commonly ask for on SA-15 Development Process, Standards, and Tools (SA-15)?

SSP SA-15 statement describing the documented development process, standards and tools and how security requirements are handled; Secure development standard and tool configuration records; Secure software development lifecycle procedures; Threat modelling and design review evidence for major releases; Static and dynamic code analysis reports with finding remediation; Vendor security questionnaires and SOC reports retained.

What is the most common gap auditors find on SA-15?

Vendor SOC reports collected but exceptions not analysed

FedRAMP Moderate (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline) · SA - System and Services Acquisition

`SA-15` Development Process, Standards, and Tools (SA-15)

Development Process, Standards, and Tools. a. Require the developer of the system, system component, or system service to follow a documented development process that: 1. Explicitly addresses security and privacy requirements; 2. Identifies the

Source: FedRAMP Moderate (NIST SP 800-53 Rev 5 baseline), SA-15. 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

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

Secure development standard and tool configuration records · Source control / CI pipeline

periodic reviewEvidence produced at each review

Threat modelling and design review evidence for major releases · Document repository
Static and dynamic code analysis reports with finding remediation · Document repository
Vendor security questionnaires and SOC reports retained · Vendor register / contract repository

governing documentDocuments that govern the control

SSP SA-15 statement describing the documented development process, standards and tools and how security requirements are handled · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Secure software development lifecycle procedures · Policy repository / GRC workspace
Software bill of materials for in scope products · 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

Vendor SOC reports collected but exceptions not analysed
Code scan findings closed without verification of fix
Security requirements absent from procurement templates for low value buys
Threat modelling performed inconsistently across product teams

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

SA-11(2) Developer Testing and Evaluation | Threat Modeling and Vulnerability Analyses (SA-11(2)) · SA-15(3) Development Process, Standards, and Tools | Criticality Analysis (SA-15(3))