NIST 800-53 REV 5 • SYSTEM AND SERVICES ACQUISITION
SA-8 — Security and Privacy Engineering Principles
Apply the following systems security and privacy engineering principles in the specification, design, development, implementation, and modification of the system and system components: {{ insert: param, sa-8_prm_1 }}.
Supplemental Guidance
Systems security and privacy engineering principles are closely related to and implemented throughout the system development life cycle (see [SA-3](#sa-3) ). Organizations can apply systems security and privacy engineering principles to new systems under development or to systems undergoing upgrades. For existing systems, organizations apply systems security and privacy engineering principles to system upgrades and modifications to the extent feasible, given the current state of hardware, software, and firmware components within those systems. The application of systems security and privacy engineering principles helps organizations develop trustworthy, secure, and resilient systems and reduces the susceptibility to disruptions, hazards, threats, and the creation of privacy problems for individuals. Examples of system security engineering principles include: developing layered protections; establishing security and privacy policies, architecture, and controls as the foundation for design and development; incorporating security and privacy requirements into the system development life cycle; delineating physical and logical security boundaries; ensuring that developers are trained on how to build secure software; tailoring controls to meet organizational needs; and performing threat modeling to identify use cases, threat agents, attack vectors and patterns, design patterns, and compensating controls needed to mitigate risk. Organizations that apply systems security and privacy engineering concepts and principles can facilitate the development of trustworthy, secure systems, system components, and system services; reduce risk to acceptable levels; and make informed risk management decisions. System security engineering principles can also be used to protect against certain supply chain risks, including incorporating tamper-resistant hardware into a design.
Practitioner Notes
Build systems using recognized security and privacy engineering principles from the start. These principles — defense in depth, least privilege, fail-safe defaults, separation of duties — should guide every design decision.
Example 1: Publish a set of security engineering principles that all development teams must follow: secure defaults (deny by default), defense in depth (multiple layers of protection), least privilege (minimum access needed), fail secure (lock down on failure), and separation of duties. Review designs against these principles before development begins.
Example 2: In your Azure or AWS environment, apply these principles through architecture patterns: use Azure Policy to enforce secure defaults, deploy network security groups for defense in depth, implement Azure PIM for just-in-time privileged access (least privilege), and configure resource locks for fail-safe protection.