What is a SCIF?

Some intelligence may be handled only inside one kind of place, and software used there cannot assume a connection to anything outside it. That place is a SCIF, a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility: an area, room, group of rooms, building, or installation certified and accredited as meeting Director of National Intelligence security standards for processing, storing, or discussing sensitive compartmented information (SCI). The definition is in the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) glossary, which takes it from a Committee on National Security Systems instruction. For anyone who buys or builds software for such a facility, the question that follows is what the software must reach, and whether it still works when it can reach nothing.

What the facility protects

The definition starts with the information. The NIST glossary entry for SCI describes it as a subset of classified national intelligence concerning or derived from intelligence sources, methods, or analytical processes, which must be protected within formal access control systems established by the Director of National Intelligence.

The governing policy is Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) 705, a four-page unclassified directive signed on May 26, 2010 and later amended to reflect the creation of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC). It turns the definition into one rule: all SCI must be processed, stored, used, or discussed in an accredited SCIF.

A SCIF can be a single room or a whole installation. What makes it a SCIF is the accreditation, not the shape of the space.

What ICD 705 requires

The directive is short, and most of it is a list of policy statements. In substance:

• Uniform requirements. Every Intelligence Community (IC) SCIF must comply with uniform physical and technical security requirements. The directive says its purpose is to protect SCI and to foster efficient, consistent, and reciprocal use of SCIFs across the IC.
• Accreditation first. A SCIF must be accredited before it is used for SCI. The head of an IC element may accredit, re-accredit, and de-accredit SCIFs, and may delegate that authority to a single named Accrediting Official.
• Waivers. The IC element head may waive the uniform requirements for a given SCIF on a documented mission need. The official who grants waivers may not be the same person as the Accrediting Official, and approved waivers are reported to the Director of NCSC within 30 days.
• Reciprocal use. SCIFs are to be constructed, operated, and maintained for reciprocal use by IC elements. A SCIF accredited without a waiver is available for reciprocal use.
• Overseas facilities. SCIFs under Chief of Mission authority follow Overseas Security Policy Board standards, with waivers going to the Department of State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security.
• Inventory. The Director of NCSC manages an inventory of all SCIFs covered by the directive.

The directive replaced the earlier Director of Central Intelligence Directive 6/9 and its manual of physical security standards.

From directive to technical specification

ICD 705 does not contain the security requirements themselves. It directs that they be issued as IC Standards, and it names two subjects for them: the uniform physical and technical requirements, and accreditation, re-accreditation, de-accreditation, and reciprocal use.

The working detail sits one level further down, in the NCSC's Technical Specifications for Construction and Management of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities. Version 1.5 is dated March 13, 2020, replaced Version 1.4 of September 2017, and is posted on an archived site of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The cover memorandum calls it a living document, updated periodically to keep up with changing technology, and it cites ICD 705 and the two standards, numbered ICS 705-01 and ICS 705-02, as references.

The result is three layers: a directive that states policy, standards that state requirements, and a technical specification that explains how to build and manage to them.

What accreditation means for software

None of these documents is about software. One consequence still follows directly from the rule that SCI is handled only inside an accredited SCIF: the systems inside sit in a different security domain from the public internet.

The NIST glossary has a term for a sanctioned path between domains. A cross domain solution is a form of controlled interface that provides the ability to manually or automatically access or transfer information between different security domains.

A controlled interface is a deliberate, managed path, approved for a purpose. A program that calls a vendor's cloud service for inference, licensing, updates, or telemetry needs such a path to exist at the site where it runs, for that purpose. A program that makes no outside calls does not depend on one. Which interfaces exist at any given site is not public.

What to check

• What the software calls outside the machine, and for what purpose: inference, licensing, updates, or telemetry.
• Whether the software still works when it can reach nothing.
• Whether the site has a controlled interface approved for each outside call. Which interfaces exist at a given site is not public, so this is a question for the site.
• Whether the facility was accredited with a waiver. A SCIF accredited without a waiver is available for reciprocal use.

Azcuna's BABEL reads, translates, and searches foreign-language documents entirely on-device, with no cloud and no connection, and keeps every claim tied to the passage it came from. The long read on air-gapped RAG goes further.

Sources

1. 1Intelligence Community Directive 705, Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities · Office of the Director of National Intelligence
2. 2Technical Specifications for Construction and Management of Sensitive Compartmented Information Facilities, Version 1.5 · National Counterintelligence and Security Center
3. 3Sensitive compartmented information facility (glossary entry) · National Institute of Standards and Technology
4. 4Sensitive compartmented information (glossary entry) · National Institute of Standards and Technology
5. 5Cross domain solution (glossary entry) · National Institute of Standards and Technology