OMB Approves NIST SP 800-171 Update

On Monday the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) announced the approval of the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Special Publication 800-171, Protecting Controlled Unclassified Information in Nonfederal Systems and Organizations. This update was sent to OMB for approval back in February. Guidance documents are not typically listed in the Unified Agenda and there is nothing on the SP800-171 web site that indicates what types of changes are being made.

This document could be published this week, but the Trump Administration is notoriously slow to publish regulatory documents so there is no telling when this will be published.

This document establishes cybersecurity requirements for electronic systems that store, receive or send Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI). It mainly covers contractors, but facilities covered under the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program would be required to comply with these standards on systems containing Chemical-Terrorism Vulnerability Information (CVI).