03.14.03: Security Alerts, Advisories, and Directives

03.14.03 sits in the NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 security assessment and monitoring family and forces a practical capability: your organization has to stay informed about relevant security issues and convert that information into controlled action inside the environment that processes, stores, or transmits CUI. In real programs, this requirement fails for one reason: teams “subscribe to advisories” but cannot show how an alert became a decision, who approved it, what changed, and how they validated the result.

For a Compliance Officer, CCO, or GRC lead, the fastest path is to treat security alerts like any other governed work intake (similar to incidents or change requests). Define authoritative sources, define who watches them, define triage criteria, and define what “done” means (patch applied, mitigation in place, or an exception with a time-bound plan). Then retain the artifacts that prove the workflow operated, especially for high-impact or widely exploited issues.

This page gives requirement-level implementation guidance you can adopt quickly: scope, roles, step-by-step procedures, required evidence, and the audit questions you’ll face.

Regulatory text

Requirement: “NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 requirement 03.14.03 (Security Alerts, Advisories, and Directives).” (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)

Operator interpretation: You need a defined process to receive security alerts/advisories/directives from relevant sources, determine applicability to your environment, and take appropriate action (or document why you did not), with evidence that the process runs as part of ongoing security operations for the CUI boundary. (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)

Plain-English interpretation (what it really means)

• “Alerts/advisories” are external signals about threats, vulnerabilities, exploited CVEs, insecure configurations, vendor security bulletins, and sector/government notifications.
• “Directives” are mandatory instructions that apply to your organization or your contract context (for many federal contractors, directives may come through customer channels, primes, or internal security leadership rather than directly from government).
• Compliance is not “we get emails.” Compliance is “we can show the full chain from alert → triage → decision → action → validation → closure,” scoped to the systems and services that touch CUI. (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)

Who it applies to

Entity types: Federal contractors and other nonfederal organizations handling CUI on nonfederal systems. (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)

Operational context (where it bites):

• The CUI system boundary (endpoints, servers, SaaS, networks, identity, logging, backup, and supporting management tooling).
• Shared services that support the boundary (identity provider, EDR, patch management, vulnerability scanning, email security).
• Third parties with logical/admin access to the CUI environment or who host/process CUI (managed service providers, cloud providers, SaaS tools, subcontractors).

If your CUI boundary relies on a third party’s platform or admin support, you still need a way to ingest advisories that affect that dependency and to track how the third party remediated or mitigated the issue.

What you actually need to do (step-by-step)

Use this as an implementable workflow. Put it in a short SOP and wire it into your ticketing/change system.

1) Define “authoritative alert sources” for your environment

Create a controlled list of sources you monitor. Typical categories:

• OEM and software publishers for your stack (OS, hypervisor, database, EDR, firewall, VPN, MDM).
• Cloud/SaaS provider security advisories for services inside the CUI boundary.
• Sector or community advisories relevant to your operations.
• Internal detections and vulnerability scanner findings that indicate active exploitation patterns.

Control point: Maintain the list as a configuration-controlled register. Assign an owner and review it as your architecture changes. (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)

2) Establish intake and routing (single front door)

Pick one mechanism that becomes “system of record”:

• A dedicated queue in your ticketing system (preferred).
• A monitored mailbox that auto-creates tickets.
• A SOAR intake that opens cases.

Rule: Every material alert that could affect CUI must become a tracked item with an ID, timestamps, owner, and status. (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)

3) Triage for applicability to the CUI boundary

Create a triage checklist your analyst can complete quickly:

• Does the affected product/service exist in our CUI boundary or a dependency?
• Is the vulnerable feature enabled?
• Do we have compensating controls (network segmentation, MFA, WAF, EDR rules)?
• Is there evidence of exploitation in the wild (if known from the alert text)?
• What’s the exposure (internet-facing, internal-only, privileged path)?

Output: “Applicable / Not applicable / Needs investigation,” plus rationale.

4) Decide and assign the required action path

Every applicable alert goes into one of these disposition paths:

• Remediate: patch, upgrade, disable feature, rotate secrets, update signatures, harden config.
• Mitigate: compensating control with a defined follow-up plan.
• Accept (exception): documented risk acceptance with approvals and expiration.
• Transfer: action required by a third party, tracked to closure with the third party’s evidence.

Operational tip: Force a clear “next action owner” (IT Ops, SecOps, App team, cloud team, third party manager). Ambiguous ownership is the top reason alert programs stall.

5) Execute through change management (even for “emergency” work)

Tie the alert ticket to:

• A change record (standard/normal/emergency).
• Implementation steps (what will be changed).
• Rollback steps.
• Test/verification steps.

If your organization uses “standard changes” for routine patching, map the alert ticket to that standard change and keep the linkage.

6) Validate closure (prove the fix worked)

Define what “verification” means:

• Vulnerability scan shows resolved, or
• Configuration state verified, or
• Version/build verified, or
• Detection content updated and alerting validated, or
• Third party confirms remediation with a report or attestation.

Close the ticket only after verification evidence is attached.

7) Management oversight and recurring review

Run a recurring review (cadence set by you) that answers:

• Which alerts were applicable to CUI systems?
• Which items are overdue and why?
• Which exceptions are nearing expiration?
• Where do we keep seeing the same control failures (e.g., patching gaps, asset inventory gaps)?

This is where a GRC lead earns audit readiness: you turn a stream of alerts into trend and accountability.

Required evidence and artifacts to retain

Auditors assess this requirement through operational proof. Retain:

• Security alert source register (owned list of monitored sources, last review date, and changes).
• Alert intake records: tickets/cases with timestamps, alert text or link, affected assets, and CUI relevance.
• Triage documentation: applicability decision and rationale.
• Action tracking: assigned owner, due date expectations set by your policy, and status history.
• Change records linked to the alert (approvals, implementation notes, rollback, test results).
• Verification proof (scan output, config screenshots, version evidence, validation notes).
• Exceptions: risk acceptance, compensating controls, approver, expiration, revalidation plan.
• Third party closure evidence where the dependency is external (provider advisory, support case, remediation confirmation).

If you use Daydream to manage control evidence, set 03.14.03 up as a recurring evidence request tied to (1) the alert source register and (2) a sampled set of closed alert tickets with change and verification attachments. That turns “we do this” into audit-ready proof without a last-minute scramble.

Common exam/audit questions and hangups

Expect variations of:

• “Show me how you receive security advisories relevant to your CUI environment.” (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)
• “Pick a recent high-impact advisory and walk me from intake to closure with evidence.”
• “How do you determine applicability to the CUI boundary?”
• “Where are exceptions documented, who approves them, and how do you ensure they expire?”
• “How do you track third-party remediation for hosted services supporting CUI?”
• “How do you ensure alerts don’t bypass change control?”

Hangup pattern: teams can show a patch program, but they can’t show that external alerts drive prioritized action, or they can’t show verification.

Frequent implementation mistakes (and how to avoid them)

1. Monitoring sources without a system of record
   Fix: require a ticket for any alert deemed potentially applicable to CUI, even if it later becomes “not applicable.”

2. No defined applicability criteria
   Fix: publish a one-page triage rubric tied to the CUI boundary asset inventory and dependency map.

3. Treating third-party issues as “not our problem”
   Fix: track third-party advisories as “transfer” items with closure evidence (support ticket, provider statement, or change notice).

4. Closing tickets on “patched” without validation
   Fix: make verification evidence a closure requirement in the workflow.

5. No governance for exceptions
   Fix: require expiration and compensating controls. If exceptions never expire, they become silent noncompliance.

Enforcement context and risk implications

No public enforcement cases were provided in the source catalog for this specific requirement. Practically, failure modes still create real contract and operational risk: you miss widely communicated vulnerabilities, you cannot prove due diligence, and you accumulate undocumented exceptions that become findings in assessments against NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3. (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)

Practical execution plan (30/60/90)

Use phases instead of date promises. The goal is fast control operation with provable evidence.

Immediate (first sprint)

• Name an owner for the alert program (SecOps lead or IT security manager).
• Stand up the “single front door” ticket queue and templates (intake, triage, disposition, verification).
• Draft the alert source register and add the sources that map to your current CUI boundary stack.
• Define triage rubric and required closure evidence.

Near-term (stabilize operations)

• Train triage responders and change approvers on the workflow.
• Run the process end-to-end on a sample set of alerts until tickets consistently include verification evidence.
• Implement exception handling: approval workflow, expiration tracking, and compensating control documentation.
• Add third-party transfer tracking for hosted services and MSP activities supporting CUI.

Ongoing (audit-ready)

• Run recurring management review of open items, overdue items, and expiring exceptions.
• Sample completed items monthly for quality: was applicability justified, was change linked, was verification present?
• Keep the alert source register current as the architecture changes.
• In Daydream, schedule recurring evidence pulls and sampling so 03.14.03 stays continuously documented.

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as a “directive” for a federal contractor if we don’t receive government bulletins directly?

Treat directives as any mandatory security instruction applicable to your CUI environment, including requirements flowing down from a prime, agency customer, or internal security leadership aligned to contract obligations. Track them in the same intake-to-closure workflow you use for advisories. (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)

Do we need to act on every CVE we see in the news?

You need to act on alerts that are applicable to your CUI boundary or its dependencies. The control is satisfied by documented triage, plus remediation/mitigation or a documented exception when you don’t remediate. (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)

How do we prove “we monitored alerts” to an assessor?

Show the alert source register and a set of tickets/cases that demonstrate intake timestamps, triage decisions, linked changes, and verification artifacts. Assessors want operational evidence, not subscriptions. (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)

Our SaaS provider won’t share detailed remediation evidence. What do we do?

Open a provider support case referencing the advisory, request confirmation of remediation status, and retain the provider’s response plus your internal risk decision. If the provider can’t confirm, document compensating controls and consider whether the service belongs inside the CUI boundary.

Can vulnerability scanner findings substitute for external advisories?

Scanner findings help, but 03.14.03 expects you to process security alerts/advisories/directives as inputs. Use scanners as a validation and discovery channel, then tie evidence back to specific alerts when applicable. (NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3)

Who should own 03.14.03, GRC or SecOps?

SecOps (or IT Security) should run the workflow day-to-day; GRC should set policy requirements, sampling, and evidence expectations and verify it operates for the CUI boundary. Split ownership cleanly so tickets do not stall between teams.