SC.L2-3.13.2  

Reference: CMMC 2.11

Family: SC

Level Introduced: 2

Title: Security Engineering

Practice:
Employ architectural designs, software development techniques, and systems engineering principles that promote effective information security within organizational systems.

CMMC Clarification:
Familiarity with security engineering principles and their successful application to your infrastructure will increase the security of your environment. NIST SP 800-160 System Security Engineering: Considerations for a Multidisciplinary Approach in the Engineering of Trustworthy Secure Systems can serve as a source of security engineering and design principles.

Organizations need to decide which designs and principles to apply. Some will not be possible or appropriate for your organization as a whole. Some will not be possible, applicable, or appropriate for specific systems or components.

Once a decision is made on which designs and principles to apply, they should be applied to your organization's policies and security standards. Starting with your baseline configuration, they should be extended through all layers of the technology stack (e.g., hardware, software, firmware) and throughout all the components of your infrastructure. The application of these chosen designs and principles should drive your organization towards a secure architecture with the required security capabilities and intrinsic behaviors present throughout the lifecycle of your technology.

As legacy components in your architecture age, it may become increasingly difficult for those components to meet security principles and requirements. This should factor into life-cycle decisions for those components (e.g., replacing legacy hardware, upgrading or re-writing software, upgrading run-time environments).

Example
You are the security architect responsible for developing strategies to protect data and harden your organization's infrastructure. You are included on the team responsible for performing a major upgrade on a legacy system. You refer to the company's documented security engineering principles. Reviewing each, you decide which are appropriate and applicable. You apply the chosen designs and principles when creating your design for the upgrade.

You document the security requirements for the software and hardware changes to ensure the principles are followed. You review the upgrade at critical points in the workflow to ensure the requirements are met. You assist in updating the policies covering the use of the
upgraded system so user behavior stays aligned with the principles.

Source: CMMC v2.0