NIST 800-53 REV 5 • CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT
CM-4(1) — Separate Test Environments
Analyze changes to the system in a separate test environment before implementation in an operational environment, looking for security and privacy impacts due to flaws, weaknesses, incompatibility, or intentional malice.
Supplemental Guidance
A separate test environment requires an environment that is physically or logically separate and distinct from the operational environment. The separation is sufficient to ensure that activities in the test environment do not impact activities in the operational environment and that information in the operational environment is not inadvertently transmitted to the test environment. Separate environments can be achieved by physical or logical means. If physically separate test environments are not implemented, organizations determine the strength of mechanism required when implementing logical separation.
Practitioner Notes
This enhancement requires a separate test environment where you can evaluate the security impact of changes without risking your production systems.
Example 1: Maintain a VMware lab environment that mirrors your production setup where you can test patches, updates, and configuration changes before deploying them live.
Example 2: Use Azure DevTest Labs or AWS sandbox accounts to spin up temporary environments that replicate production for security impact testing.