Assessing Security Requirements for Controlled Unclassified Information

The protection of Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) resident in nonfederal systems and organizations is of paramount importance to federal agencies and can directly impact the ability of the federal government to successfully conduct its assigned missions and business operations. This publication provides federal and nonfederal organizations with assessment procedures and a methodology that can be employed to conduct assessments of the CUI security requirements in NIST Special Publication 800-171, Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in Nonfederal Systems and Organizations. The assessment procedures are flexible and can be customized to the needs of the organizations and the assessors conducting the assessments. Security assessments can be conducted as self-assessments; independent, third-party assessments; or governmentsponsored assessments and can be applied with various degrees of rigor, based on customerdefined depth and coverage attributes. The findings and evidence produced during the security assessments can facilitate risk-based decisions by organizations related to the CUI requirements.