- Use the log platform's role model to separate 'can search' from 'can administer', and keep the administer role to the smallest workable set of named people.
- Log the management actions themselves, so a change to audit configuration is itself an auditable event.
3.3.9OFFICIAL STATEMENT BELOWDERIVED REQUIREMENTPENDING NIST SME REVIEW
3.3.9 — Audit management restriction
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)
Limit management of audit logging functionality to a subset of privileged users.
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
Only a small, named subset of privileged users may manage the logging itself — change what is collected, alter retention, or delete records. Being an administrator of a system must not automatically mean being an administrator of its audit trail.
Across revisions
Withdrawn as a standalone requirement in Rev. 3 (the 03.03.09 slot is marked withdrawn); restricting audit management is carried inside Protection of Audit Information, 03.03.08.
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
- Role assignments in the logging platform showing the restricted subset
- A periodic review confirming the subset is still small, named, and current
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 |