For Official Use Only (FOUO) is an

information security Information security is the practice of protecting information by mitigating information risks. It is part of information risk management. It typically involves preventing or reducing the probability of unauthorized or inappropriate access to data ...

designation used by some governments.

United States

Among U.S. government information, FOUO was primarily used by the U.S. Department of Defense as a handling instruction for

Controlled Unclassified Information Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) is a category of unclassified information within the U.S. Federal government. The CUI program was created by President Obama’s Executive Order 13556 to create a streamlined method for information sharing ...

(CUI) which may be exempt from release under exemptions two to nine of the

Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act (United States) of 1966 * F ...

(FOIA). It is one of the various sub-categorizations for strictly unclassified information which, on 24 February 2012, was officially consolidated as CUI. Other departments continuing the use of this designation include the

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior, home, or public security ministries in other countries. Its missions invol ...

U.S. Department of Defense

On 24 February 2012, the

Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence The under secretary of defense for intelligence and security or USD(I&S) is a high-ranking civilian position in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) within the United States Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) that ac ...

published the publicly availabl
DoDM 5200.01 DoD Information Security Program
a four-volume manual consolidating all marking of information on used by the U.S. Department of Defense. Most of the information regarding FOUO was in the now-superseded fourth volume, but the second volume also contains guidelines on FOUO information. On 6 March 2020, the DoD replaced DoDM 5200.01 Volume 4 with DoDM 5200.48 -

(CUI). The term "FOUO" had been defined in DoDM 5200.01 Vol 4. It is no longer in the replacement document except as a reference to not requiring a "U" marking in the banner or footer signifying unclassified information as was required with the "old FOUO marking" (para 3.4.b.(1)).

Australia

For Official Use Only (FOUO) was one of five categories of the Dissemination Limiting Marker (DLM) defined by the Australian Government Information Security Management Guidelines. The guidelines state that FOUO should only be used on unclassified information, when its compromise may cause limited damage to national security, Australian Government agencies, commercial entities or members of the public. However unlike the United States usage, the presence or absence of an FOUO marker expressly does not provide any information about the document's status under the

. Since 2018 this has been replaced by OFFICIAL:Sensitive.

Germany

(FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY) is one of four secrecy designations in use by the Federal Republic of Germany. It is denoted at the top of each document in either black or blue text reading "VS-NUR FÜR DEN DIENSTGEBRAUCH," which is always written in Upper case.

References

{{Reflist Classified information Freedom of information legislation United States government secrecy

United States

U.S. Department of Defense

Australia

Germany

See also

References