CMMC Practice CM.L2-3.4.3 – System Change Management: Track, review, approve, or disapprove, and log changes to organizational systems.
Links to Publicly Available Resources
This document provides tips, tools, and techniques for leading a successful change initiative This document provides assessment guidance for conducting Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) assessments for Level 2. Cyber Management Alliance is company that offers consulting services for change management specifically security change management. This site provides various resources for the change management process based on ITIL. It also allows for a free ITSM trial. Goes over the strategic, tactical, and operational changes. This blog reviews the ITIL change management process and covers various models and workflows that are part of this process. This is a blog from Plutora on ITIl V4 change management. This SANS whitepaper covers how to implement and re-implement change policies. This is a blog that covers change management and configuration management and their revolutionizing cybersecurity. IT change management describes the practices designed to ensure successful prioritizing, approval, scheduling, and execution of changes to IT systems. This site provides examples of templates that can be used throughout change management process such as change management template, change proposal template, change management communications plan template, etc. This guidance from US-CERT is intended for organizations seeking help in establishing a configuration and change management process and for organizations seeking to improve their existing configuration and change management process. This is a video from Simplilearn that covers ITIL Change Management process.
Discussion [NIST SP 800-171 R2]
Tracking, reviewing, approving/disapproving, and logging changes is called configuration change control. Configuration change control for organizational systems involves the systematic proposal, justification, implementation, testing, review, and disposition of changes to the systems, including system upgrades and modifications. Configuration change control includes changes to baseline configurations for components and configuration items of systems, changes to configuration settings for information technology products (e.g., operating systems, applications, firewalls, routers, and mobile devices), unscheduled and unauthorized changes, and changes to remediate vulnerabilities. Processes for managing configuration changes to systems include Configuration Control Boards or Change Advisory Boards that review and approve proposed changes to systems.
For new development systems or systems undergoing major upgrades, organizations consider including representatives from development organizations on the Configuration Control Boards or Change Advisory Boards. Audit logs of changes include activities before and after changes are made to organizational systems and the activities required to implement such changes.
NIST SP 800-128 provides guidance on configuration change control.
Further Discussion
You must track, review, and approve configuration changes before committing to production. Changes to computing environments can create unintended and unforeseen issues that can affect the security and availability of the systems. Relevant experts and stakeholders must review and approve proposed changes. They should discuss potential impacts before the organization puts the changes in place. Relevant items include changes to the physical environment and to the systems hosted within it.