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NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 · IA-2

Identification and Authentication (Organizational Users)

US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) · cited in 200 of our lessons

Explanation

What it asks for. Organisational users must be uniquely identified and authenticated, and that identity must be associated with processes acting on their behalf.

In practice. This means every person has an individual account, shared logins are eliminated, and authentication runs through a central identity provider with single sign-on and multi-factor authentication, particularly for privileged, remote and cloud access. Auditors expect evidence of MFA coverage, lists of shared accounts with justification and configuration of the identity provider. CIS Controls 5 and 6 cover the same themes.

Common gaps. Gaps include MFA exceptions that grow over time, legacy protocols that bypass MFA, and applications still using local accounts outside single sign-on. Shared administrator accounts remain common in operational technology and network devices.

Open SP 800-53 at NIST
The official text
Uniquely identify and authenticate organizational users and associate that unique identification with processes acting on behalf of those users. Discussion: Organizations can satisfy the identification and authentication requirements by complying with the requirements in [HSPD 12](#f16e438e-7114-4144-bfe2-2dfcad8cb2d0) . Organizational users include employees or individuals who organizations consider to have an equivalent status to employees (e.g., contractors and guest researchers). Unique identification and authentication of users applies to all accesses other than those that are explicitly identified in [AC-14](#ac-14) and that occur through the authorized use of group authenticators without individual authentication. Since processes execute on behalf of groups and roles, organizations may require unique identification of individuals in group accounts or for detailed accountability of individual activity. Organizations employ passwords, physical authenticators, or biometrics to authenticate user identities or, in the case of multi-factor authentication, some combination thereof. Access to organizational systems is defined as either local access or network access. Local access is any access to organizational systems by users or processes acting on behalf of users, where access is obtained through direct connections without the use of networks. Network access is access to organizational systems by users (or processes acting on behalf of users) where access is obtained through network connections (i.e., nonlocal accesses). Remote access is a type of network access that involves communication through external networks. Internal networks include local area networks and wide area networks. The use of encrypted virtual private networks for network connections between organization-controlled endpoints and non-organization-controlled endpoints may be treated as internal networks with respect to protecting the confidentiality and integrity of information traversing the network. Identification and authentication requirements for non-organizational users are described in [IA-8](#ia-8).

From NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5, a work of the US government in the public domain.

Lessons that cite it

Real incidents where this item mattered: the latest 12 of 200.