Overview
The Foundation is a top-secret, global organization. We contain thousands of anomalies, and run hundreds of projects and operations. As a result, information is compartmentalized; not everyone is cleared to know about everything. That's why we have the security clearance levels — something you're probably no stranger to if you had a background in the military or the NSA.
| Personnel Security Clearance Levels |
|---|
| # | Classification | Personnel |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | No Clearance | Personnel employed in low-security positions (e.g. front companies), or otherwise not requiring access to any data on anomalies. These personnel receive paychecks from the Foundation, but don't necessarily know it. |
| 1 | Unrestricted | Personnel who require knowledge of anomalies, but no access to research or technical data. High-security sites (such as Site-19) require all personnel to be at least Level 1 cleared. |
| 2 | Restricted | Personnel that require research and technical data into one or more documents. Given to researchers, engineers, technicians, guards, and agents dealing directly with the document's contents. |
| 3 | Confidential | Personnel that occupy positions of seniority within the Foundation, managing teams and/or projects. Senior researchers, supervisors, project managers, and tactical response teams will typically have this clearance. |
| 4 | Secret | Personnel that require access to highly sensitive strategic data and relevant intelligence. Only usually given to site directors, department heads, project leads, and strategic commanders. |
| 5 | Top Secret | Personnel that require maximum access to relevant files and operations. Reserved for high-level regional directors, anyone on the Ethics Committee, and Overseers. |
| 6 | Cosmic Top Secret | No personnel hold this clearance; only used for documents and specific projects. |
These levels are simple and easy to remember for day-to-day operations; your supervisor has a higher clearance than you, your subordinates have a lower one, and the janitor that mops up after your team has the lowest.
However, you're probably also wondering why your level isn't enough to clear you for access to all projects at that level. If you're a Level 2 researcher, you don't automatically have access to all files at Level 2 — but if you're a Level 2 response officer, you often will, because you need to have access to the Special Containment Procedures of a breaching anomaly. These levels are often synonymous with rank in Foundation workplace culture, adding to further confusion.
To put it simply, while your clearance level is required to access certain information, it is not the only requirement. You also need to be actively using that information, or otherwise have a good reason to need access to it. As an example, a high-ranking site director has much more breadth of information when it comes to classified Foundation secrets, but a low-ranked field agent would have much more depth of information relating to their post — the agent needs access to highly sensitive information that the site director does not need, even if the agent is working under said director.
This is why all Foundation employees need to have a strong understanding of what they do and don't have need-to-know access to. The vast majority of employees don't work with anomalies, and if they do, it's never more than a few at once; and if you are working with more than a handful, your clearance is high enough to get you whatever information you need.
However, this doesn't work so well if you're the one enforcing that security. You might be here because you're a guard who needs to be briefed on how to check people at security checkpoints, or a RAISA archivist needing to update employee or document records. The Foundation, in fact, has a much more robust system of security clearance codes. These codes are described below.
Personnel Clearance Profile (PCP)
Every employee with security clearance at the Foundation has a PCP code, indicating their maximum access level on different projects. It's often ignored, but you can see it on your ID card at the bottom in small print. A typical PCP code follows this format:
X#-#/DIV-#/DOC-@LOC
Components
[X] Personnel Class: Personnel are assigned classifications based on their individual importance. These are denoted by a single letter. This is not considered part of security clearance — it is used at security checkpoints to ensure high-value personnel avoid interaction with dangerous anomalies.
| Personnel Classification |
|---|
| Class | Description |
|---|---|
| D | Low-value personnel used in dangerous (but low-skill) situations. Typically unused, as D-Class rarely require security clearances. |
| C | Average personnel that handle day-to-day operations. |
| B | Important personnel that handle local or facility operations, and must be escorted off-site during containment breaches. |
| A | Highly valuable personnel that are essential to operations. Cannot enter facilities with hazardous anomalies without security override. |
| O | For "Overseer." Highest-ranking administrative personnel in the Foundation. |
[X] Global Clearance: This is an employee's default access level to all files, across the Foundation. Most employees have a very low global clearance, typically 0 or 1 for non-administrative personnel.
[#] Division Clearance: This is an employee's default access level to all files within their division. This can refer to a top-level division (such as Research or Containment), a department, or a specific project or operation. An employee's division clearance is always higher than their global clearance — an employee in Human Resources needs more access to HR files than to files from other divisions.
Note: An employee's security clearance level, expressed in shorthand, is usually their division clearance. A "Level 3" employee has a level 3 clearance on their specific project or in that division.
[DIV] Division Name: Indicates which division the employee has clearance for. Top-level divisions have three-letter codes, while departments and other specific projects have four- to six-character codes.
| Division Codes Examples |
|---|
| Research | RSC |
| Containment | CNT |
| Security | SECR |
| Memetics | MEME |
| Site-17 Human Resources | HR17 |
[#] Local Clearance This is an employee's specific access to individual files and documents. An employee's local clearance is always higher than their division clearance — an employee needs more access to the anomaly they're working with than they do for other files in their division.
[DOC] Document Name: These are the specific files an employee has access to under their local clearance. This field is denoted by the SCP file number under which they are categorized. For example, the file Incident 096-1-A can be accessed automatically under 3/096 clearance.
Operations not dealing with anomalies also have their own unique three- or four-letter codes — for example, 2/NSG clearance provides access to files under access key NEWSPAPER SOUP GARBAGE. They don't always have cool names.
Note: Not all employees have a division or global clearance. No global clearance should be indicated with a "0", while division clearance should be omitted. Conversely, if their local clearance on specific files does not exceed their division clearance, it should be omitted (and likewise with division to global).
[LOC] Location: This is used by security checkpoint officers to ensure that employees are not trespassing into restricted areas. This code is typically given by which site the employee is stationed at, using single capital letters to indicate the type of location. Lowercase letters can be used to distinguish between multiple locations of the same designation (e.g. Site-45a in Australia, and Site-45b in Nevada).
| Location Codes |
|---|
| S | Site |
| X | Sector |
| A | Area |
| Z | Zone |
| U | Unit |
| O | Outpost |
| P | Provisional Site |
Syntax
These punctuation symbols are used in the code to indicate different things.
| / | Indicates that a clearance level applies to a specific division or anomaly. |
| - | Large divider, used between multiple clearances of different scope (separates global and division, or division and local). Additionally used in location identifiers to separate multiple locations. |
| . | Small divider, used between multiple clearance levels of the same scope (separates different divisions, or different local documents). Additionally used in location identifiers for sub-locations. |
| , | Used for equal clearance level on multiple anomalies. |
| @ | Separates the location identifier from the rest of the code. |
As a manner of good syntax, PCP codes should have ascending clearances from left to right, even on different clearance levels of equal scope. Also, please don't use spaces. It breaks our syntax parsing.
Examples
Technician (Level 1)
C0-1/CNT19-2/173-@S19.X4
This is a C-Class personnel, with no default access to all files across the Foundation. They have Level 1 default access to files in Site-19's containment division. They have Level 2 access to SCP-173 and its associated files. They are stationed at Site-19, Sector-4.
Researcher (Level 2)
C0-2/RSC19-3/173-@S19.X4
This is a C-Class personnel, with no default access to all files across the Foundation. They have Level 2 access to all files within the Site-19 research department. They have Level 3 access to SCP-173 and its associated files. They are stationed at Site-19, Sector-4.
Supervisor (Level 3)
B1-2/ADM.3/RSC19-4/096.5/173,682-@S19
This is a Class-B personnel, with Level 1 default access to all files. They have Level 2 default access to administration division files, and Level 3 default access to files within the Site-19 research department. They have Level 4 access to SCP-096 files, and Level 5 (full) access to both SCP-173 and SCP-682 files. They are stationed at Site-19.
Site Director (Level 4)
A3-4/ADM-@S19-S17
This is a Class-A personnel, with Level 3 default access to all files. They have Level 4 default access to all administration division files. They have no specific access to local documents not covered by their other clearances. They are stationed at both Site-19 and Site-17.
Overseer (Level 5)
O5
This is an Overseer, with Level 5 default access to all files. Because their default clearance already gives them full access to every file Foundation-wide, they don't need any other special clearances. They are not stationed at a specific facility.
Document Clearance Profile (DCP)
The PCP code system is robust enough to handle most access to locations and SCP files — often, you'll see a file denoted as something like "Level 1 classified," meaning that anyone with Level 1 clearance (global, division, or local) can access it. However, this sometimes isn't good enough. A file may contain highly sensitive information, where you don't want someone outside that local clearance to access it at all. The opposite situation is also common: a file needs to be accessible to multiple, different level employees — but without fully declassifying it.
As a result, every document the Foundation handles that isn't fully declassified to the public has a DCP code — indicating the minimum special clearance required to access it. In other words, while the PCP code indicates who can access what, the DCP code indicates what can be accessed by whom. These codes are typically only used on the backend of digital documents (such as with the SCiPNet database), but can often be seen printed on physical files and folders. A typical DCP code follows this format:
G#-#/DIV-#/DOC-(X)
Components
[#] Required Global Clearance: This indicates the clearance needed to access a file, if the employee is both outside the local project the document is filed under, and outside that division. Fully declassified files have a global clearance of 0, indicating that any employee can access them (since the minimum global clearance is 0).
[#] Required Division Clearance: This indicates the clearance needed to access a file, if the employee is outside the local project the document is filed under, but they are part of the division it's under. This is to accomodate supervisors and inspectors who require access to a breadth of documentation, as well as for researchers to share their data with other teams (or god forbid, cross-test their anomalies).
[DIV] Division Name: Same as above. This is the division that an employee must be part of to access the file. For example, they might need to be Level 1 in the site research department, or Level 2 in the site security department. This is always lower than the global clearance requirement — someone in the division has more good reason to have access.
The ANY tag is used to signify that someone of that clearance level in any division can access it. This is extremely useful for files that need to be accessible to all employees at that pay grade, without altering the global clearance and potentially accidentally allowing unauthorized access.
Note: People, usually programmers, sometimes ask why the DCP code goes global to local, when the opposite direction would make more sense in terms of priority. The answer is because this system was made in 1947. I've told them that I could fix it in literally one hour, but apparently it'll break the entire database somehow.
This is also why we don't have G-Class personnel, skipping straight from F to H — the "G" signifies that it's a DCP, so if it's used in PCP codes it breaks our parsing. RAISA had to fight the Site Directors' Committee over this. They'll do anything other than fix our useless Perl "legacy" backend.
[#] Required Local Clearance: This indicates the clearance needed to access a file, provided that the employee is on that specific team or working with that specific anomaly. This is always lower than the division clearance requirement, since if you're working with that anomaly, you have more reason to know than someone in the same division working elsewhere.
[DOC] Document Name: Same as above. This is the category, anomaly, or specific operation the file itself is located under.
Note: A majority of files are only protected under one clearance (local, division, or global). However, some files, especially more sensitive ones, have more extensive requirements. When a file has a clearance level in its header, that's usually the division clearance — local clearance is so granular that it's redundant.
[X] File Hazards: This indicates if the file contains any anomalous hazards.
| Hazard Markers |
| ! | Cognitohazard |
| i | Infohazard |
| x | Memetic Kill Agent |
| # | Digital Hazard or Malware |
| * | File Contains Anomaly |
Syntax
These punctuation symbols are used in the code to indicate different things.
| / | Indicates that a clearance level applies to a specific division or anomaly. |
| - | Indicates that access requires one clearance OR another. Additionally separates the hazard warnings. |
| + | Indicates that access requires one clearance AND another. Higher priority than the OR operator. |
| [ ] | Used to indicate priority, for creating more extensive expressions. Don't abuse this. |
| ( ) | Distinguishes hazard markers for files. |
Unlike PCP codes, DCP codes go in order of descending clearance from left to right.
Examples
SCP-173
G1-1/ANY
Accessible to personnel with Level 1 global clearance, or Level 1 clearance in their division.
SCP-7000, Level 3 File
G4-3/ETTRA-3/DATA
Accessible to personnel with Level 4 global clearance, or Level 3 clearance in the ETTRA, or Level 3 in the Analytics Department.
SCP-7000, Level 5 File
G5-5/ETTRA
Accessible to personnel with Level 5 global clearance, or Level 5 clearance in the ETTRA.
G4-3/ADM-2/CTN+2/OPS-1/083D
Accessible to personnel with Level 4 global clearance, or Level 3 administrative division clearance, or both Level 2 containment department and Level 2 operations clearance, or Level 1 clearance in SCP-083-D.
SCP-001 (Landing Page)
G5-4/ADM-4/RSC-3/001-ANY-(x)
Accessible to personnel with Level 5 global clearance, or Level 4 administrative division clearance, or Level 4 research division clearance, or Level 3 clearance in any SCP-001. Protected by memetic kill agent.
What Are These For?
It's pretty obvious why the files and employee IDs themselves need these long, hard to parse clearance codes, but what use is there for you knowing them?
- If you're a researcher, you may be wondering what clearance level to put in your file's header. It's the division clearance requirement, indicating who in your department outside your immediate team can access it.
- If you're a supervisor or manager, you will often need to quickly convey who has information to what parts of your project without having to say it verbally.
- If you're a guard, you need to know who has credentials to access security checkpoints and restricted zones.
- If you're an officer responding to an security breach, you need to be able to read an employee's credentials before shooting them for unauthorized access.
- If you're in data security, everyone and their dog will be asking you to update their file DCP codes.
- If you're a total nerd, you might be reading this for fun.
But for the most part, you don't need to worry about this. You can just use your standard clearance level to brag to your subordinates.
See also: