- Define what screening means for your organization and write it down — for most contractors, criminal-background and employment-verification checks at hire, not government clearances.
- Tie screening completion into account provisioning so access to CUI-bearing systems cannot be granted before the check clears; a policy that HR runs and IT never sees is the common gap.
- Cover the populations that skip normal onboarding: contractors, temporary staff, interns, and vendor personnel who receive system access.
3.9.1OFFICIAL STATEMENT BELOWBASIC REQUIREMENTPENDING NIST SME REVIEW
3.9.1 — Personnel screening
3.9 Personnel Security · 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)
Screen individuals prior to authorizing access to organizational systems containing CUI.
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
Before a person is authorized to touch systems holding CUI, the organization checks who they are. For most nonfederal companies this means employment screening — background and identity checks proportional to the role — wired into provisioning so that access follows a completed check rather than preceding it.
Across revisions
Carried into Rev. 3 as 03.09.01 Personnel Screening, with rescreening under organization-defined conditions made explicit.
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 written screening standard and where it sits in the hiring and provisioning flow
- Sampled records showing screening completed before CUI system access was granted
- How screening is handled for non-employee populations with access
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 |