- Ship logs off the systems that generate them promptly; a copy on a central platform survives what happens to the endpoint.
- Restrict access to the log platform tightly and use immutability or write-once retention where the platform offers it.
- Separate duties where headcount allows: the person administering a system should not be the only person able to purge that system's logs.
3.3.8OFFICIAL STATEMENT BELOWDERIVED REQUIREMENTPENDING NIST SME REVIEW
3.3.8 — Audit information protection
3.3 Audit and Accountability · NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 2 · The heading label is this site's navigational shorthand; the official language is the statement below.
Official requirement statement (verbatim)
Protect audit information and audit logging tools from unauthorized access, modification, and deletion.
NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 2 — Protecting CUI in Nonfederal Systems ↗NIST SP 800-171A — Assessing Security Requirements for CUI ↗Independent interpretation
What this requirement is after
Logs are evidence, and the first thing a competent intruder does with admin access is edit or delete them. Audit records and the tools that manage them must be protected from unauthorized access, modification, and deletion — including by the administrators whose actions they record.
Mapped practices
Brilliant at the Basics practices that support this requirement
No practice maps to this requirement — deliberately.
The campaign’s twenty practices are a priority list, not a control catalog, and none of them works this requirement’s substance directly. It still applies to you if it is in your contract’s scope: address it through your own implementation and the related artifacts below, and treat the absence of a mapping here as honesty, not permission to skip it.
Doing the work
Implementation considerations and evidence
- The access list for the logging platform, reviewed and dated
- Retention or immutability settings protecting stored records
Artifacts
Templates and worksheets with a mapped relationship
No artifact in the library names this requirement yet. The library index groups everything by category and practice.
The other revision
Where this lands in Rev. 3
Provenance
Sources and review status
| Primary sources | NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 2 — Protecting CUI in Nonfederal Systems · NIST SP 800-171A — Assessing Security Requirements for CUI |
|---|---|
| Review status | Pending NIST SME review |
| Content version | 1.0 |
| Updated |