Impact Analyses
✓ LOW ✓ MODERATE ✓ HIGHRequirements NIST SOURCE
Analyze changes to the system to determine potential security and privacy impacts prior to change implementation.
Discussion (NIST Supplemental Guidance)
Organizational personnel with security or privacy responsibilities conduct impact analyses. Individuals conducting impact analyses possess the necessary skills and technical expertise to analyze the changes to systems as well as the security or privacy ramifications. Impact analyses include reviewing security and privacy plans, policies, and procedures to understand control requirements; reviewing system design documentation and operational procedures to understand control implementation and how specific system changes might affect the controls; reviewing the impact of changes on organizational supply chain partners with stakeholders; and determining how potential changes to a system create new risks to the privacy of individuals and the ability of implemented controls to mitigate those risks. Impact analyses also include risk assessments to understand the impact of the changes and determine if additional controls are required.
Enhancements NIST SOURCE
CM-4(1) Separate Test Environments LOW MODERATE ✓ HIGH
Analyze changes to the system in a separate test environment before implementation in an operational environment, looking for security and privacy impacts due to flaws, weaknesses, incompatibility, or intentional malice.
Discussion
A separate test environment requires an environment that is physically or logically separate and distinct from the operational environment. The separation is sufficient to ensure that activities in the test environment do not impact activities in the operational environment and that information in the operational environment is not inadvertently transmitted to the test environment. Separate environments can be achieved by physical or logical means. If physically separate test environments are not implemented, organizations determine the strength of mechanism required when implementing logical separation.
CM-4(2) Verification of Controls LOW ✓ MODERATE ✓ HIGH
After system changes, verify that the impacted controls are implemented correctly, operating as intended, and producing the desired outcome with regard to meeting the security and privacy requirements for the system.
Discussion
Implementation in this context refers to installing changed code in the operational system that may have an impact on security or privacy controls.
Implementation Guidance
Original engineering commentary written for this explorer — not NIST source text and not authoritative guidance.
No engineering interpretation has been authored for CM-4 yet. This section is architected to receive it — see the Requirements and Assessment sections above for the authoritative NIST source content in the meantime.
Assessment
Assessment Objectives
- changes to the system are analyzed to determine potential security impacts prior to change implementation;
- changes to the system are analyzed to determine potential privacy impacts prior to change implementation.
Examine
[SELECT FROM: Configuration management policy; procedures addressing security impact analyses for changes to the system; procedures addressing privacy impact analyses for changes to the system; configuration management plan; security impact analysis documentation; privacy impact analysis documentation; privacy impact assessment; privacy risk assessment documentation, system design documentation; analysis tools and associated outputs; change control records; system audit records; system security plan; privacy plan; other relevant documents or records].
Interview
[SELECT FROM: Organizational personnel with responsibility for conducting security impact analyses; organizational personnel with responsibility for conducting privacy impact analyses; organizational personnel with information security and privacy responsibilities; system developer; system/network administrators; members of change control board or similar].
Test
[SELECT FROM: Organizational processes for security impact analyses; organizational processes for privacy impact analyses].
Overlays
STIGs & CCIs
No STIG checks or CCI mappings are currently loaded for CM-4. This section is architected to display, per product: STIG ID, Finding ID, Severity, Title, Description, Check, Fix, CCI, and NIST control mapping — but nothing is populated here until a real DISA STIG/CCI dataset is ingested.
Learn more about STIG/CCI integration →Evidence
Categorized from the SP 800-53A "Examine"/"Test" artifact list above by keyword — not an authoritative NIST evidence list.
Policy
- system security plan
- privacy plan
Configuration
- Configuration management policy
- configuration management plan
- privacy risk assessment documentation, system design documentation
Testing
- Organizational processes for security impact analyses
- organizational processes for privacy impact analyses
Other Records
- procedures addressing security impact analyses for changes to the system
- procedures addressing privacy impact analyses for changes to the system
- security impact analysis documentation
- privacy impact analysis documentation
- privacy impact assessment
- analysis tools and associated outputs
- change control records
- system audit records
- other relevant documents or records