CMMC Requirement RA.L3-3.11.7E – Supply Chain Risk Plan: Develop a plan for managing supply chain risks associated with organizational systems and system components; update the plan at least annually, and upon receipt of relevant cyber threat information, or in response to a relevant cyber incident.
Links to Publicly Available Resources – Coming Soon
This publication provides guidance to federal agencies on identifying, assessing, and mitigating ICT supply chain risks at all levels of their organizations.
The growing dependence on products, systems, and services from external providers, along with the nature of the relationships with those providers, present an increasing level of risk to an organization. Threat actions that may increase risk include the insertion or use of counterfeits, unauthorized production, tampering, theft, insertion of malicious software and hardware, and poor manufacturing and development practices in the supply chain. Supply chain risks can be endemic or systemic within a system element or component, a system, an organization, a sector, or the Nation. Managing supply chain risk is a multifaceted undertaking that requires a coordinated effort across an organization to build trust relationships and communicate with both internal and external stakeholders. Supply chain risk management (SCRM) activities involve identifying and assessing risks, determining appropriate mitigating actions, developing SCRM plans to document selected mitigating actions, and monitoring performance against plans. SCRM plans address requirements for developing trustworthy, secure, and resilient systems and system components, including the application of the security design principles implemented as part of life cycle-based systems security engineering processes.
[NIST SP 800-161 Rev. 1] provides guidance on supply chain risk management.
Further Discussion
An organization is required to have a supply chain risk management plan that assesses and responds to the identified risks from those organizations that provide IT products or services, including any cloud or other third-party services with a role in the operation of the system. The organization should be cognizant of services outside the scope of the system but required for the operation of the system as part of their plan. Since the cyber environment changes rapidly and continuously, it is equally important for the organization to update the plan in response to supply chain cyber incidents or emerging information.