Compliance Colleague · Standards · United States

NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5: cited answers and gap reviews

An AI compliance assistant for federal systems, FedRAMP providers and RMF teams · updated 2026-10-03

NIST SP 800-53 is the catalogue of security and privacy controls for US federal information systems. Compliance Colleague covers all 20 control families, Low, Moderate and High baselines, tailoring and the Risk Management Framework, and helps write control narratives.

Try it on your own NIST SP 800-53 work: one document review or two questions, free for 30 days, no card required. Start free →

What it covers

All 20 control families, from AC to SR
Low, Moderate and High baselines, and FIPS 199/200 categorization
Release 5.2.0 changes and organization-defined parameters
Assessment procedures (SP 800-53A), OSCAL and RMF (SP 800-37)
Federal vs nonfederal scope (SP 800-171)

Questions you can ask

“Which AC controls and enhancements are in the Moderate baseline?”
“How do we write an SSP narrative for SC-7 boundary protection?”
“What changed in Release 5.2.0?”

Every answer cites the NIST SP 800-53 requirement, article or control it rests on, so you can check it in seconds.

What you can upload for review

An SSP section checked against the controls it claims
A system boundary diagram checked against SC-7
A POA&M (Excel) checked for weak milestones

Files: PDF, Word, Excel or CSV, Visio (.vsdx), draw.io, or an image such as a screenshot. Choose a full review, a prioritized fix list (each gap with its fix and the evidence an assessor will expect) or a short summary, and download the result as Word or PDF.

Crosswalk NIST SP 800-53 to other standards

With NIST SP 800-53 in your plan you can compare it against any standard in the library and see where they align and exactly where they don’t. Common pairings:

What it’s built from

Compliance Colleague carries the official text and checks its answers against it: NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5: Security and Privacy Controls (OSCAL catalog) (National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)); NIST SP 800-53A Rev. 5: Assessment procedures (OSCAL) (National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)); NIST SP 800-53B: Control Baselines (Low, Moderate, High, Privacy; OSCAL profiles) (National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)).

Re-checked every month for new versions, deadlines and penalty changes. Full list on the sources page.

More United States standards

NIST CSF · NIST AI RMF · FedRAMP · CMMC 2.0 · HIPAA · CCPA / CPRA · ITAR · EAR · TSA Security Directives · Section 508

Compliance Colleague covers 30+ security, privacy and AI governance standards. It reviews policies, spreadsheets and diagrams and answers questions with the clause cited; your judgment and sign-off stay with you. Try it free, no card required →

Research aid, not legal or audit advice, and not an audit opinion or certification. Verify findings against the official text before relying on them.