- Encrypt by default: full-disk or container encryption on anything digital that travels turns most transport-loss scenarios into non-disclosures.
- Keep a transport log — what left, with whom, when, and arrival confirmed — for the cases where media must physically move.
- Ask whether the move is needed at all; replacing courier-and-carry with secure electronic transfer removes this requirement's hardest parts.
03.08.05OFFICIAL TITLEPENDING NIST SME REVIEW
03.08.05 — Media Transport
03.08 Media Protection · NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3
Independent summary of the official requirement
Requires protecting, controlling, and maintaining accountability for system media containing CUI during transport outside controlled areas; documenting activities associated with such transport; and implementing cryptographic mechanisms to protect the confidentiality of CUI on digital media during transport unless the media are protected by alternative physical safeguards.
Rev. 3 requirement text is multi-part and parameterized with organization-defined values, so this site summarizes rather than reproduces it. The summary is independent — read the official publication for the binding wording.
NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 — Protecting CUI in Nonfederal Systems ↗NIST SP 800-171A Rev. 3 — Assessing Security Requirements for CUI ↗Independent interpretation
What this requirement is after
Media in motion — the backup drive going off site, the laptop shipped to a new hire, the disk couriered to a vendor — is where custody is easiest to lose. Transport gets a chain of accountability, the activity gets documented, and digital media get encryption, so a lost package is an inconvenience rather than a spill.
Across revisions
Merges Rev. 2's transport accountability (3.8.5) and transport encryption (3.8.6): cryptographic protection during transport is now a component of Media Transport rather than a separate requirement, and documenting transport activities is added.
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
- Transport and custody logs with dispatch and receipt confirmation
- Encryption configuration or policy for transportable 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 came from in Rev. 2
Provenance
Sources and review status
| Primary sources | NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 — Protecting CUI in Nonfederal Systems · NIST SP 800-171A Rev. 3 — Assessing Security Requirements for CUI |
|---|---|
| Review status | Pending NIST SME review |
| Content version | 1.0 |
| Updated |