- Most of the implementation rides on 3.8.7: allow only registered, owned devices and anonymous media is excluded by construction rather than by vigilance.
- Train the reflex anyway — found media goes to IT or security, not into the nearest port to 'see what it is'.
3.8.8OFFICIAL STATEMENT BELOWDERIVED REQUIREMENTPENDING NIST SME REVIEW
3.8.8 — Ownerless storage prohibition
3.8 Media Protection · 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)
Prohibit the use of portable storage devices when such devices have no identifiable owner.
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
The USB stick found in the parking lot is the canonical attack, and this requirement is the flat answer: if nobody can say whose device it is, it does not connect. No owner, no port.
Across revisions
The standalone slot (03.08.08) is withdrawn in Rev. 3; the prohibition travels with the consolidated Media Use requirement, 03.08.07.
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
- Policy language prohibiting ownerless portable storage
- Device registration records backing the technical restriction
- Awareness material covering found media
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 |