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Introduction

The US Department of Defense's Information Technology Security Certification and Accreditation Process (DITSCAP) is the standard Department of Defense (DOD) approach for ensuring that information systems operate at an acceptable level of security risk. The process is the same in all branches of the armed forces and all DOD agencies and applies to all unclassified and classified DOD Information Technology (IT) systems that collect, store, transmit or process information. DITSCAP standardizes and consolidates the activities that lead to the security certification and accreditation of IT systems. Successful certification and accreditation results in an Authority to Operate (ATO) that remains valid for a period of three years.