NIST 800-53 REV 5 • CONTINGENCY PLANNING
CP-2(8) — Identify Critical Assets
Identify critical system assets supporting {{ insert: param, cp-02.08_odp }} mission and business functions.
Supplemental Guidance
Organizations may choose to identify critical assets as part of criticality analysis, business continuity planning, or business impact analyses. Organizations identify critical system assets so that additional controls can be employed (beyond the controls routinely implemented) to help ensure that organizational mission and business functions can continue to be conducted during contingency operations. The identification of critical information assets also facilitates the prioritization of organizational resources. Critical system assets include technical and operational aspects. Technical aspects include system components, information technology services, information technology products, and mechanisms. Operational aspects include procedures (i.e., manually executed operations) and personnel (i.e., individuals operating technical controls and/or executing manual procedures). Organizational program protection plans can assist in identifying critical assets. If critical assets are resident within or supported by external service providers, organizations consider implementing [CP-2(7)](#cp-2.7) as a control enhancement.
Practitioner Notes
This enhancement requires you to identify your most critical assets as part of contingency planning — what systems and data absolutely must be protected and recovered first?
Example 1: Conduct a Business Impact Analysis (BIA) to rank your systems by criticality and identify which ones would cause the most damage if unavailable for extended periods.
Example 2: Create a critical asset list that includes your domain controllers, financial databases, CUI repositories, and customer-facing systems, with each asset's RTO and RPO defined.