Contractor personnel who need access to classified information are generally cleared under the National Industrial Security Program (NISP) personnel security program.

What that means in practice

  • The NISP is the U.S. government program that governs how cleared contractors and their employees are vetted and granted security clearances for classified work.
  • Under NISP, contractor employees receive a Personnel Security Clearance (PCL) when they are sponsored by a cleared company for work on a classified contract.
  • The process is overseen for most defense and many federal contractors by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency (DCSA), which conducts or manages the national security background investigation and adjudication.

So if you see a question like “Contractor personnel are cleared under which program?”, the concise answer is: the National Industrial Security Program (NISP) Personnel Security Program.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.