Track, review, approve, or disapprove, and log changes to organizational systems.

You must track, review, and approve configuration changes before committing them to your production systems. Configuration changes can create unintended and unforeseen issues that can affect the security and availability of your systems. You need to establish a change control board to review proposed changes. They should discuss potential impacts before deploying the changes.

Document all proposed changes to your IT systems. This includes operating system updates, software deployments, security setting changes, and IT infrastructure changes. Establish a "change control board" consisting of IT staff and persons with business operation responsibilities. Discuss proposed changes before deployment to your production environment. Identify any potential security and business operation risks associated with a proposed change. Only deploy proposed changes after they have been approved by the change control board. Use our configuration management plan document and change control form templates to help meet this requirement.