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A successful public-sector cybersecurity pilot is a controlled decision exercise, not a product demonstration. Define the service problem and boundaries, capture a pre-pilot baseline, choose a small set of measurable outcomes, assign accountable owners, test in the agency’s real environment, document exceptions and operational effects, and record a go, revise, pause, or stop decision.
This checklist adapts the lifecycle in CISA’s TIC 3.0 Pilot Process Handbook (October 2021) and the measurement guidance in CISA’s Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CPGs). TIC 3.0 is federal program guidance; CPGs are voluntary practices; and State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP) targets apply to that grant program and fiscal year. None is a universal legal mandate for every state, local, tribal, or territorial agency.
What a public-sector cybersecurity pilot must prove
CISA defines a pilot as testing “the configuration and security capabilities of a technology in an agency’s environment.” That distinction matters. A vendor demonstration can show that a feature exists; a pilot must show whether the configured capability works with your identity systems, networks, data, users, operating procedures, support model, and risk tolerance.
The pilot should answer one decision question: should the agency continue, modify, expand, pause, or exit this capability? Write that decision into the charter before deployment. Otherwise, teams tend to declare success when a test completes, even if the service is difficult to operate, creates unacceptable user friction, or cannot meet procurement and compliance conditions.
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CISA’s federal TIC sequence provides a useful model outside the federal program when adapted to local governance: proposal development and approval, project-plan submission and approval, execution and management, conclusion, use-case development and approval, acquisition, continuing feedback, and compliance. Confirm whether the October 2021 handbook remains the active TIC procedure before relying on it for a current federal requirement.
Use the checklist in nine gates
| Gate | Required output | Decision owner |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Purpose and decision | Problem statement, use case, decision question, sponsor, and authorized decision maker | Executive sponsor or delegated governance body |
| 2. Scope and boundaries | Systems, users, sites, data, integrations, exclusions, dependencies, and stop conditions | Technical and security leads, approved by sponsor |
| 3. Baseline and measures | Pre-pilot state, definitions, data sources, targets or ranges, cadence, owners, and evidence artifacts | Measurement owner with security and operations agreement |
| 4. Requirements and test plan | Applicable security capabilities, test cases, safe conditions, acceptance criteria, and evidence-retention plan | Security architect and test lead |
| 5. Governance and roles | RACI-style assignments, approval gates, escalation routes, and contact list | Sponsor and agency governance |
| 6. Schedule and resources | Start and end dates, milestones, staffing, support commitments, change control, and exit plan | Program manager |
| 7. Operational risk | Impact analysis, data-handling plan, dependencies, rollback, recovery, and risk register | Operations, privacy, continuity, and security owners |
| 8. Findings and exceptions | Evidence-backed findings, defects, vulnerabilities, false positives, mitigations, owners, and due dates | Test lead and risk owner |
| 9. Conclusion and decision | Measure-by-measure results, residual risk, support and acquisition needs, lessons learned, and signed disposition | Authorized decision maker |
1. Define the purpose and decision
State the service or security problem
Describe the problem in operational terms: for example, privileged remote access lacks consistent multifactor authentication, endpoint alerts are not reaching the security operations team quickly enough, or a new network-monitoring capability must be evaluated without interrupting a public service. Avoid a feature-led objective such as “test product X.” The technology is the means; the risk or service problem is the reason.
Write the use case and decision question
Specify who will use the capability, for which activity, and under what conditions. A useful decision question names the evidence required: “Can this configuration detect the agreed test behaviors on county-managed endpoints without exceeding the approved latency and support thresholds, and can the agency sustain it with available staff?”
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- Name the person or body authorized to approve continuation, modification, pause, or termination.
- List the decision date and the information that must be available at that gate.
- Record assumptions that, if disproved, will trigger a scope review.
2. Set scope and hard boundaries
Inventory what is in scope
Identify systems, applications, cloud tenants, network segments, sites, user groups, device types, data classifications, integrations, and environments. Distinguish production, staging, and test resources. Record the technology versions and configuration baselines that will be tested; a result from a lab build is not evidence about the production architecture.
Document exclusions and dependencies
Write down what is explicitly outside the pilot, such as a separate department, legacy devices, operational technology, or highly sensitive records. List dependencies including identity providers, certificate services, logging platforms, service desks, telecommunications, managed-service staff, and vendor support. An exclusion prevents accidental expansion; a dependency identifies a failure that may be outside the pilot technology itself.
Define pause and stop conditions
Pre-authorize conditions that suspend testing: an unplanned outage, evidence of data exposure, unsafe changes to a critical system, loss of rollback capability, a material scope change, or a newly discovered legal or privacy restriction. Specify who can invoke a pause, who must be notified, and what evidence is needed to resume. Stopping a pilot is a valid control outcome, not a project failure.
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3. Establish the baseline before deployment
Capture the current state while the existing service is operating normally. Without a baseline, a percentage improvement or reduction in alerts has no defensible meaning. Record the measurement period, population, data source, collection method, and known gaps.
- Current security-control coverage, such as the proportion of remote and privileged accounts using multifactor authentication.
- Existing detection, response, remediation, and service-desk times.
- Availability, latency, error rates, and user-support volume for affected services.
- Current staffing hours, escalation paths, and recurring operating costs.
- Existing data flows, retention settings, integrations, and unresolved risks.
Freeze or version the baseline. If a concurrent security project changes the same systems, mark the overlap and explain how attribution will be handled. A baseline is a reference point, not a promise that conditions will remain static.
4. Choose measures that can support a decision
Define each measure completely
For every outcome, answer the questions used in CISA’s CPG FAQ: “How do we define when Goals are achieved? How is measurement conducted and quantified? How often should measurement be performed?” Put the answers in a measure register with these fields:
- Definition: the numerator, denominator, unit, and inclusion or exclusion rules.
- Data source: system, log, ticket queue, exercise record, survey, or other evidence location.
- Owner: the person accountable for collection and quality.
- Baseline: the pre-pilot value and measurement period.
- Target or acceptable range: agreed before testing, with any confidence or tolerance rule.
- Cadence: continuous, daily, weekly, milestone-based, or end-of-pilot.
- Evidence artifact: query export, signed test record, configuration snapshot, ticket report, or other reproducible record.
Use a limited, balanced set
Too many metrics make the pilot a reporting exercise. Select measures that cover both security and operability:
| Category | Example question | Possible evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Security effectiveness | Did the configured control detect, block, or contain the agreed test behavior? | Reproducible test results, alerts, prevention logs, and analyst validation |
| Coverage | What portion of the approved systems, users, or data flows was actually protected? | Asset inventory, identity report, deployment record, or configuration query |
| Time | How long did identification, triage, containment, or remediation take? | Time-stamped logs and incident or service tickets |
| Availability and user impact | Did the capability affect uptime, latency, accessibility, or task completion? | Monitoring data, support contacts, user testing, and accessibility review |
| Operational workload | Can existing staff handle alert volume, tuning, maintenance, and reporting? | Analyst time records, queue statistics, and runbooks |
| Integration and support | How much effort is needed to connect and sustain the capability? | Change records, support cases, dependency map, and staffing estimate |
| Sustainability | Can the agency operate the capability after pilot staff and vendor attention decrease? | Handover exercise, documented procedures, training record, and support plan |
Interpret external targets correctly
CISA’s FY 2025 SLCGP guidance gives recommended target ranges in a grant-performance context. It lists 80% for entities conducting annual cyber-risk assessments, 70% for entities performing phishing training, 70% for entities implementing multifactor authentication for all remote access and privileged accounts, 60% for entities able to analyze network traffic and activities related to potential threats, 90% for entities with endpoint detection and response systems funded for implementation, and 40% for entities conducting annual tabletop and full-scale exercises to test cybersecurity plans.
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These figures are not observed national outcome statistics, universal adoption rates, or automatic pass marks for a pilot. Use them only when the agency’s objective, population, funding context, and measurement definition match. Verify the current grant notice when an active award is involved because SLCGP guidance is fiscal-year specific. A pilot target should be tailored to the agency’s risk, maturity, technology, and available evidence; never choose a threshold after seeing the results.
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5. Map security requirements to test cases
Identify the security capabilities relevant to the use case and explain how the pilot will demonstrate each one. Do not accept a list of claimed features as proof. Convert each requirement into a test with a controlled condition, expected result, evidence location, and acceptance rule.
- Write the requirement. Example: privileged remote access must require the approved multifactor method and produce an attributable audit event.
- Define the safe test condition. Use designated accounts, non-destructive test data, maintenance windows, and approved source addresses or devices.
- Specify the action. State exactly what the tester will attempt, including valid, invalid, interrupted, and recovery paths where appropriate.
- Define expected evidence. Identify the log fields, alert, ticket, configuration state, or screen record that proves the result.
- Set acceptance criteria. Include required behavior, timing, coverage, false-positive tolerance, and any accessibility or privacy condition.
- Record the result and environment. Capture date, configuration version, tester, data set, exceptions, and deviations from the script.
Separate a measured result from a vendor assertion. If the pilot cannot test a claim, label it as unverified and identify the additional evidence or contract language required before acquisition.
6. Assign governance, roles, and approvals
The exact offices and approvals depend on jurisdiction, agency structure, data, and award terms. Treat the following as a planning model rather than a universal legal requirement:
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- Sponsor: owns the problem, resources, and final recommendation.
- Program manager: maintains the plan, milestones, decisions, risks, and communications.
- Technical lead: owns architecture, configuration, integration, and technical evidence.
- Security lead: defines security requirements, test conditions, findings, and residual risk.
- Operations lead: assesses service impact, support workload, monitoring, and handover.
- Privacy lead: reviews personal-data collection, use, disclosure, minimization, and retention.
- Procurement and legal contacts: address acquisition method, terms, intellectual property, records, liability, and jurisdictional rules.
- Accessibility and records contacts: review access needs, public-record obligations, retention, and discovery implications where applicable.
- Vendor or integrator contact: supplies support, escalation, documentation, and configuration assistance without replacing agency accountability.
Set approval gates for the charter, architecture and data-flow review, test readiness, production exposure, material change, and final disposition. Publish an escalation route with response expectations. A contact list that lacks decision authority will not resolve an outage or an unresolved high-risk finding.
7. Build the schedule, resources, and exit plan
Use a defined start and end window. Include planning, approvals, configuration, baseline capture, testing, observation, analysis, remediation retest, conclusion, and decision time. Leadership support is an explicit expectation in CISA’s TIC pilot guidance because teams need authority to protect the schedule and resolve cross-office conflicts.
Resource the full lifecycle
- Named staff for architecture, engineering, security analysis, service operations, privacy, procurement, and user support.
- Vendor support hours, escalation contacts, documentation, and response commitments.
- Test accounts, devices, network paths, representative data, logging capacity, and safe rollback space.
- Time for tuning, false-positive analysis, accessibility checks, training, and evidence review.
- Funding and procurement milestones that do not assume continuation is already approved.
Control changes
Use a change record for configuration, scope, test script, data source, threshold, or schedule changes. Record the reason, approver, impact on comparability, and whether the baseline or acceptance criteria must be reset. A change that improves a result but invalidates the original test must be reported, not hidden.
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Design exit before entry
Document how to disable the capability, remove agents or connectors, revoke credentials, restore configurations, preserve required records, and verify service health. Include a contingency if the pilot stops unexpectedly. Estimate the labor and cost of exit; a reversible pilot usually carries less risk than one that leaves unowned dependencies.
8. Assess operational impact and risk
Evaluate effects on service continuity, users, administrators, data, and connected systems. Include expected interruption and worst credible impact. Consider whether logging or telemetry introduces new sensitive-data flows, whether a control blocks legitimate users, and whether a dependency failure could affect a public-facing service.
- Map data flows, collection points, access permissions, retention, and deletion responsibilities.
- Test rollback and recovery in a representative but safe environment before relying on them in production.
- Plan for false positives, alert surges, capacity limits, and support tickets.
- Check accessibility and usability for affected staff and residents where the pilot changes an interface or workflow.
- Record residual risks that remain even if every technical test passes.
Tailor the baseline and controls to the actual environment and risk. A generic control checklist cannot substitute for an agency-specific threat model, architecture review, privacy analysis, or continuity plan.
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Maintain a single findings register linked to test cases and evidence. For each item, record the observed condition, affected scope, severity or consequence, reproducibility, owner, mitigation, due date, status, and disposition. Include defects, vulnerabilities, control gaps, false positives, missing evidence, and process failures.
Use explicit exception records when a test deviates from the approved plan or a requirement is not met. An exception should state why it occurred, what risk it creates, compensating controls, expiration or review date, and the authority that accepted it. Do not convert an untested claim into a pass simply because the pilot ran on schedule.
Compare pilot candidates consistently
When several technologies or approaches could address the same problem, score them against identical dimensions. This is a practical synthesis of CISA’s emphasis on environment-specific capability, structured execution, and lessons learned, not a CISA-prescribed formula.
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| Dimension | Questions to ask |
|---|---|
| Security outcome and evidence quality | Did the candidate achieve the defined result, and can an independent reviewer reproduce the evidence? |
| Architectural fit | Does it work with identity, network, endpoint, cloud, logging, and service-management arrangements already in use? |
| Implementation effort | What engineering, integration, migration, tuning, and change-management work is required? |
| Service and user impact | What happens to availability, latency, accessibility, administrator workflows, and public services? |
| Staffing and support | Can the agency provide the skills, coverage, training, and escalation needed after the pilot? |
| Procurement and funding fit | Can the approach be acquired under applicable rules and funded through the intended program or budget? |
| Privacy, accessibility, and records | Does data handling, interface design, retention, or disclosure create additional obligations? |
| Reversibility and exit cost | How quickly can the agency disable it and restore the previous state? |
| Transferability | Will lessons apply to other departments, sites, or agencies, or only to this narrow configuration? |
Frameworks and public-sector resources: use them in context
Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals
CISA describes CPGs as a prioritized subset of practices intended to meaningfully reduce risk and provide a baseline and benchmark for critical-infrastructure operators. They are organized around NIST Cybersecurity Framework functions and can help select a pilot objective. CISA also cautions that completing a CPG does not necessarily fulfill an entire referenced NIST CSF subcategory. Tailor the practice to the agency’s maturity, technologies, and risks.
State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program
SLCGP performance measures belong to that grant program and its fiscal-year guidance. Align a grant-funded pilot to the award’s terms, reporting definitions, and current notice rather than treating FY 2025 recommended ranges as general government requirements.
Nationwide Cybersecurity Review and other SLTT services
CISA describes the Nationwide Cybersecurity Review as a free, anonymous annual self-assessment for state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, based on the NIST CSF and sponsored by DHS and MS-ISAC. CISA also lists the Cyber Security Evaluation Tool, tabletop exercise packages, and services such as Malicious Domain Blocking and Reporting. Eligibility, enrollment, and availability can change; confirm current details before placing one in a pilot plan.
Binding federal examples
CISA’s Binding Operational Directive 23-01 is a federal example of measurable requirements for asset visibility and vulnerability detection on federal networks. It is binding within its federal scope and should not be presented as a requirement for state or local governments generally.
CISA’s federal grant playbook describes an adapted CPG checklist for grant-project risk assessment and planning, with annual project-assessment updates under its model language. Whether that model applies depends on the specific program and award terms.
Conduct the final decision review
At conclusion, present results against every agreed measure, not only the favorable ones. Include the tested configuration, scope achieved, evidence quality, operational workload, user and service impact, unresolved findings, residual risk, resource requirements, acquisition considerations, and lessons learned. State which assumptions changed and which results cannot be generalized beyond the pilot environment.
Record one authorized disposition:
- Go: continue under documented conditions, controls, funding, and support commitments.
- Revise: change configuration, scope, controls, or operating model and retest specified measures.
- Pause: preserve evidence and stop activity until a named dependency, risk, or approval is resolved.
- Stop: exit using the approved rollback and records plan.
Identify the decision maker, date, dissenting views, conditions, follow-up owners, and next review point. Feed lessons into the next use-case proposal rather than treating the pilot as an isolated experiment. This is how a time-limited test improves later architecture, procurement, and security planning.
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