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KSI-PIY-RSDReviewing Security in the SDLC

LOW
MODERATE

Formerly KSI-PIY-04

>Control Description

Persistently review the effectiveness of building security and privacy considerations into the Software Development Lifecycle and aligning with CISA Secure By Design principles.
Defined terms:
Persistently

>NIST 800-53 Controls

>Trust Center Components
3

Ways to express your implementation of this indicator — approaches vary by organization size, complexity, and data sensitivity.

From the field: Mature implementations express data minimization through automated enforcement — DLP policies preventing excessive data collection, retention rules auto-expiring data beyond defined periods, and minimization metrics showing data collection is intentional and bounded rather than aspirational.

De-identification and Anonymization

Product Security Features

De-identification capabilities as a product feature — techniques used for analytics and non-production environments

Manual: Auditor reviews de-identification techniques for adequacy against re-identification risk

Purpose Limitation Documentation

Documents & Reports

Data processing purposes with legal basis for each — expressing intentional, bounded data collection

Data Minimization Policy

Policies

Human-readable data minimization principles — documents intent behind automated retention and collection controls

>Programmatic Queries

Beta
CI/CD

CLI Commands

Check branch protection enforcement
gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/branches/main/protection --jq '{reviews: .required_pull_request_reviews.required_approving_review_count, checks: .required_status_checks.contexts, admins: .enforce_admins.enabled}'
List recent workflow runs
gh run list --limit 10 --json name,status,conclusion,event

>20x Assessment Focus Areas

Aligned with FedRAMP 20x Phase Two assessment methodology

Completeness & Coverage:

  • Does your secure SDLC cover all phases — design (threat modeling), development (SAST, SCA), testing (DAST, penetration testing), deployment (IaC scanning), and maintenance (dependency updates)?
  • Are all software components subject to the secure SDLC — including internal services, customer-facing applications, infrastructure-as-code, and configuration code?
  • How do you ensure CISA Secure By Design principles are applied — including memory-safe languages, secure defaults, eliminating default passwords, and reducing attack surface?
  • Are third-party or open-source components incorporated into the CSO subject to the same SDLC security requirements as internally developed code?

Automation & Validation:

  • What automated security gates exist in the CI/CD pipeline (SAST, DAST, SCA, secret scanning, container scanning), and do they block merges or deployments on failure?
  • How do you measure whether secure SDLC practices are effective — do you track finding rates by category (injection, XSS, auth issues) trending over time?
  • What happens when a security gate fails — is the developer provided with actionable guidance, and how quickly must the finding be resolved before the pipeline unblocks?
  • How do you validate that threat modeling is conducted for new features and that identified risks are addressed before release?

Inventory & Integration:

  • What SAST, DAST, SCA, and secret scanning tools are integrated into your CI/CD pipeline, and how do findings aggregate into a single view?
  • How does your secure SDLC integrate with your vulnerability management system to track findings from code to remediation?
  • Are SDLC security policies (required scans, approval gates, finding severity thresholds) defined as pipeline-as-code and version-controlled?
  • How do you track which repositories and services have full SDLC security coverage versus partial or no coverage?

Continuous Evidence & Schedules:

  • How do you demonstrate that every production release in the past 90 days passed through the secure SDLC pipeline with all security gates?
  • Is SDLC security data (scan results, gate pass/fail, finding counts, remediation timelines) available via API or dashboard?
  • How frequently is the secure SDLC reviewed for effectiveness, and what evidence shows improvements based on those reviews?
  • What evidence demonstrates alignment with CISA Secure By Design principles in recent releases?

Update History

2026-02-04Removed italics and changed the ID as part of new standardization in v0.9.0-beta; no material changes.

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