FAR 52.204-21 defines Federal contract information as information, not intended for public release, that is provided by or generated for the Government under a contract to develop or deliver a product or service, but not information the Government provides to the public or simple transactional information such as that needed to process payments 1.
The clause's basic safeguarding controls include limiting information system access to authorized users, processes and devices 2, and verifying and controlling connections to and use of external information systems 3.
Covered defense information and cloud services
Under DFARS 252.204-7012, covered defense information means unclassified controlled technical information or other information 4 that requires safeguarding or dissemination controls pursuant to and consistent with law, regulations, and Governmentwide policies 5, and that is either marked or otherwise identified in the contract, task order or delivery order and provided to the contractor by or on behalf of DoD in support of the performance of the contract 6, or collected, developed, received, transmitted, used or stored by or on behalf of the contractor in support of the performance of the contract 7.
If a contractor intends to use an external cloud service provider to store, process or transmit covered defense information, the clause requires that provider to meet security requirements equivalent to the FedRAMP Moderate baseline 8.
What good data handling looks like in a tool
Bids2Bank leaves request bodies out of its error reports, because proposal text, uploaded documents and form fields travel in them 9.
Its library extraction tells the model never to output personal information such as a home address, date of birth, SSN or salary 10, and code drops and counts any field the model is not allowed to propose 11. Résumés are kept professional-only by default 12.
Worked example. A proposal coordinator wants an AI tool to tighten a technical volume that includes a controlled drawing list. She removes the drawing list, uses the company-approved tool on the rest, and edits the controlled section by hand.
Indented paragraphs are invented worked examples. Tool links open Bids2Bank and need a free account.