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Data Confidentiality: Detect, Respond to, and Recover from Data Breaches

Data confidentiality refers to protecting data from unauthorized access and disclosure, including means for protecting personal privacy and proprietary information. Lapses in data confidentiality can lead to a data breach, which can have far-reaching operational, financial, and reputational impacts for the enterprise. The NCCoE is committed to helping organizations address threats to data confidentiality.

Demonstrating How Organizations Can Efficiently Detect, Respond, and Recover from Data Confidentiality Attacks

The NCCoE Data Security Project Team is collaborating with industry experts and technology vendors to develop a reference design and a detailed description of the practical steps needed to assist an organization in detecting, responding, and recovering information from threats to data confidentiality.
Status: Finalized Guidance

This guide provides recommendations on how to respond to and recover from data beaches, including cybersecurity and privacy considerations to prepare for data breaches and specific technical direction for implementation. 

Upon review, we recognize that this NIST/NCCoE publication contains potentially biased terminology. As new publications are developed, they will follow NIST’s inclusive language guidance.

NIST SP 1800-29 (Complete Guide HTML)Web Version NIST SP 1800-29 (Complete Guide HTML)
NIST SP 1800-29 (Complete Guide PDF)Web Version NIST SP 1800-29 (Complete Guide PDF)
NIST SP 1800-29A: Executive SummaryDocument Version NIST SP 1800-29A: Executive Summary
NIST SP 1800-29B: Approach, Architecture, and Security CharacteristicsDocument Version NIST SP 1800-29B: Approach, Architecture, and Security Characteristics
NIST SP 1800-29C: How-To GuidesDocument Version NIST SP 1800-29C: How-To Guides

Project Abstract

An organization’s data is one of its most valuable assets and must be protected from unauthorized access and disclosure. Large and small data breaches can impact the ability of an organization to survive as operational and financial data, along with employee or customer personally identifiable information, can become compromised. This can undermine the organization’s work and success and lead to severe reputational damage.

The NCCoE is helping enterprises address data confidentiality challenges through collaborative efforts with industry and the Information Technology (IT) community, including vendors of cybersecurity solutions.

The goal of this project is to provide a practical solution to detect, respond to, and recover from incidents that affect data confidentiality. This project will also provide guidance that parallels the Identifying and Protecting Assets and Data Against Data Breaches Project. The NCCoE chose to address data confidentiality in two parallel projects to provide modular, adaptable guidance rather than utilize an all-or-nothing approach. In addition, two projects allow for multiple scenarios for preventing and reacting to a data breach or other loss of data confidentiality event.

Read the project description

An organization’s data is one of its most valuable assets and reacting to a data breach requires quick and diligent action.

Collaborating Vendors

Organizations participating in this project submitted their capabilities in response to an open call in the Federal Register for all sources of relevant security capabilities from academia and industry (vendors and integrators). The following respondents with relevant capabilities or product components (identified as “Technology Partners/Collaborators” herein) signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement to collaborate with NIST in a consortium to build this example solution.