Spillage of Classified Information

Spillage of classified information is a contamination of lower level systems with material of a higher classification.^[1] Examples would include burning a CD with classified data from a SIPRNet machine and inserting it into a NIPRNet machine. The act of insertion is sufficient to be called a spillage even if the system may not have copied the files, since it is possible to have resided in memory (such as by a virus scan or stored in a swap file).

The formal definition by the US Government is found in^[2] as: "Security incident that results in the transfer of classified or CUI information onto an information system not accredited (i.e., authorized) for the appropriate security level."

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