What is NIST 800-53 CA-7 Continuous Monitoring?
NIST 800-53 CA-7 (Continuous Monitoring) requires organizations to maintain ongoing situational awareness of information security and privacy posture across the system boundary. For configuration-based controls, this means continuous benchmark scanning rather than annual or quarterly point-in-time assessments. Tools that only produce annual or quarterly assessments cannot evidence it.
The longer answer.
CA-7 asks for a continuous monitoring strategy with defined metrics, set frequencies for monitoring and for assessing control effectiveness, ongoing assessments, correlation and analysis of the results, response actions, and regular reporting of security status to designated officials.
CA-7 is one of the 50 NIST controls CISGuard maps. Every scan is compared with the previous baseline, regressions are classified and alerted within minutes, and the Framework Coverage Report shows CA-7 status with drill-down to the scans behind it.
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