03.13.03E — Concealment and Misdirection

Official NIST requirement content

Security requirement

Employ the following concealment and misdirection techniques to mislead adversaries: [Organization-defined: concealment and misdirection techniques] .

Official NIST discussion

Discussion

Concealment and misdirection techniques can significantly reduce the targeting capabilities of adversaries (i.e., window of opportunity and available attack surface) to initiate and complete attacks. For example, virtualization techniques provide organizations with the ability to disguise systems, potentially reducing the likelihood of successful attacks without the cost of having multiple platforms. The increased use of specific concealment and misdirection techniques and methods, including randomness, uncertainty, and virtualization, may sufficiently confuse and mislead adversaries and subsequently increase the risk of discovery or exposing tradecraft. Concealment and misdirection techniques may provide additional time to perform core mission and business functions. The implementation of concealment and misdirection techniques may add to the complexity and management overhead required for the system. This requirement does not enhance a specific requirement in SP 800-171 but can be used to strengthen the protection of CUI associated with critical programs or high value assets.

Official organization-defined parameters

Tailoring decisions required

Resolve these values through the governing organization’s approved tailoring and risk-management process before declaring the requirement implemented.

concealment and misdirection techniquesorganization-defined concealment and misdirection techniquesthe concealment and misdirection techniques used to confuse and mislead adversaries potentially targeting systems are defined.

Official protection strategy classifications

Protection strategies supported

These classifications are carried from the official SP 800-172 OSCAL record and help explain the enhanced requirement’s defensive purpose.

PS-CRSCyber Resiliency

PS-PRAPenetration-Resistant Architecture

Bare Metal Cyber interpretation

Implementation perspective

Treat Concealment and Misdirection as an enhanced CUI protection outcome for elevated threat conditions that must be reflected in the system boundary, documented implementation, operational behavior, and assessment evidence. Pay particular attention to secure architecture, boundary protection, communications security, cryptography, and isolation of CUI processing.

Confirm the federal agency selected this enhanced requirement for the critical program or high-value asset and identify the CUI system components, services, users, and external connections in scope.
Resolve every organization-defined parameter through an approved governance and tailoring process.
Map each clause of the requirement to an accountable owner, implementation mechanism, and evidence source.
Verify that inherited and shared implementations are supported by current provider evidence and responsibility boundaries.
Collect evidence during normal operation and review changes, exceptions, and deficiencies on a risk-based cadence.

Questions to ask

Which critical-program or high-value-asset CUI, data flows, users, and services are protected by this enhanced requirement?
Which portions are implemented locally, inherited, shared, or not applicable, and what evidence supports that determination?
Do the system security plan, deployed configuration, operating process, and assessment evidence tell the same story?
What change, incident, or threshold should trigger reassessment?

Evidence and validation

network and trust-boundary diagrams
firewall and gateway configurations
cryptographic configuration and key records
segmentation and isolation test results

Common failure patterns

diagrams omitting cloud and third-party paths
encryption enabled without key governance
flat trust zones permitting unnecessary lateral movement
boundary rules accumulating without owner review

Official NIST SP 800-172A content

Assessment objectives and methods

Assessment objectives (1)

[Organization-defined: concealment and misdirection techniques] are used to mislead adversaries.

Examine

System and communications protection policy
procedures addressing concealment and misdirection techniques for the system
system design documentation
system configuration settings and associated documentation
system architecture
list of concealment and misdirection techniques to be used for organizational systems
system audit records
system security plan
other relevant documents or records

Interview

System/network administrators
personnel with information security responsibilities
personnel with the responsibility to implement concealment and misdirection techniques for systems

Test

Mechanisms supporting and/or implementing concealment and misdirection techniques

Official source-control relationships

Source NIST SP 800-53 controls

These controls are referenced by the official SP 800-172 Rev. 3 OSCAL record. Open the corresponding control pages for complete control text, enhancements, D3FEND mappings, and related learning.

Source controlSC-30Open SP 800-53 control →

Source record

Authoritative sources

Bare Metal Cyber is an independent educational publisher and is not affiliated with or endorsed by NIST. The official publications, the responsible federal agency, and the governing contract or agreement determine applicability, tailoring, assessment depth, and required implementation.