🚀 What’s This Blog About?

This blog explains how a CMMC Acceptable Use Policy helps organizations set clear rules for how employees use company systems, handle sensitive information, and protect Controlled Unclassified Information. It also covers recommended policy sections, end-user responsibilities, and how policy statements can support a System Security Plan.

Key Takeaways

✅ Write policies in plain language so employees can clearly understand their security responsibilities.
✅ A CMMC Acceptable Use Policy should address passwords, approved software, media handling, remote work, physical security, and incident reporting.
✅ Linking policy statements to CMMC objectives can improve traceability and make System Security Plan documentation easier.

Who Should Read This?

This guide is ideal for defense contractors, compliance teams, security leaders, and organizations preparing for CMMC Level 2. It is especially useful for teams that need a clear, practical policy for communicating security rules to non-privileged system users.

Acceptable Use Policy

We've covered every domain within NIST SP 800-171 Rev 2 with a separate policy. Each policy has relevant roles with responsibilities. The roles and responsibilities table also serves as our dissemination list. This alleviates our end-users from having to acknowledge every domain-level policy. It also requires us to communicate end-user responsibilities in a separate policy. As we went through each domain, statements addressable to end-users were set aside. These became the basis for our acceptable use policy. This policy encompasses all domains but focuses on non-privileged end users.

Policy Writing

Acceptable use policies address the behaviors expected of our end users. We require end users to acknowledge having received this policy. We test their comprehension of key content from within the policy. Here are some of the principles that guided this acceptable use policy:

Restating controls does not constitute an organizational policy or procedure.
Policies should omit references to specific technologies.
Use plain language when writing procedures and avoid technical jargon.

Policy Structure

A cover page tracks specific details regarding the policy, including:

Version - number capturing major and minor policy revisions
Effective Date - date of policy dissemination
Last Review Date - date the policy was last reviewed
Next Scheduled Review Date - the date for the next mandatory policy evaluation
Classification - internal categorization of the policy’s sensitivity for confidentiality

We followed our templated structure for all domain level policies. From this guidance we incorporate the following major sections into our policy:

The purpose statement should identify why the policy exists and what it aims to achieve.

The scope should identify who it applies to and under what circumstances.

The policy governance section covers most of the organization defined parameters. These subsections cover the following details:

Policy Dissemination List - defines roles or personnel to disseminate the policy
Procedure Dissemination List - defines roles or personnel to disseminate the procedures
Policy Level - organization-level; mission/business process-level; system-level
Policy Owner - defines an official to management the policy and supporting procedures
Policy Review Frequency - how often the organization reviews and updates the policy
Policy Review Triggers - events that require an out-of-cycle policy review or update
Procedure Review Frequency - how often the organization reviews and updates the procedures
Procedure Review Triggers - events that require an out-of-cycle procedure review or update

The fourth section includes our policy statements. Subsection headings group related Policy statements together. Each policy statement has a unique number for traceability to other documents. A policy statement number consists of the section, subsection, and policy statement order

The fifth section identifies the relevant roles and responsibilities identified in the policy. A single, short paragraph describes the responsibilities for each role. The sixth section documents a revision history. This table captures policy changes, including: version, effective date, approver(s), change summaries. The seventh section captures a formal acknowledgement of the policy by the end user.

Policy Statements

We used the same section headings from domain policies whenever possible. This helped establish traceability for statements addressing the same controls to different audiences.

Rules for Behavior for System Users

The organization provides information systems only for official business and related tasks. The organization limits access to those with a documented need to use the system. Users must complete their security training before accessing the system. Users must never post internal system details on public websites or social media. The organization reviews all data made public for sensitive content.

Users cannot access social media for personal use on company systems without approval. Users must have approval before using alternative cloud storage or AI applications. Users may not use work email addresses to sign up on any non-business websites. The organization updates these rules every year or whenever major changes happen. All staff sign the rules again every twelve months.