- Enforce technically in the identity provider; a written standard nobody's directory enforces is documentation, not implementation.
- Blocking known-breached and dictionary passwords does more for real security than raising character-class arithmetic; current federal guidance (SP 800-63B) points the same direction.
3.5.7OFFICIAL STATEMENT BELOWDERIVED REQUIREMENTPENDING NIST SME REVIEW
3.5.7 — Password complexity
3.5 Identification and Authentication · 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)
Enforce a minimum password complexity and change of characters when new passwords are created.
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
New passwords must meet a minimum complexity bar and actually change character content — not increment a counter. This is Rev. 2's floor for password quality wherever passwords remain in use.
Across revisions
Rev. 3 consolidates 3.5.7 through 3.5.10 into Password Management (03.05.07), aligned with SP 800-63B — composition rules give way to blocklists and length.
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
- Password policy export from each identity store where passwords exist
- Screenshots or configuration showing banned-password or breach-list checking where deployed
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 |