How Long Does a Security Clearance Last?

Nothing in the governing regulation makes a security clearance expire on a date. 32 CFR 117.10 contains no expiration period for eligibility for access to classified information, and no reinvestigation interval either — it sends both to the guidance of your Cognizant Security Agency. The “five years for Top Secret, ten for Secret” answer given by nearly every page on this question describes a periodic-reinvestigation schedule, and the periodic model itself is being retired.

The short answer

Ask “how long does my clearance last” and you are asking about two different things at once. Access is permission to see classified information in a particular job, switched on and off by an employer against a requirement. Eligibility is a determination about you, recorded in a government system. Losing a cleared job ends the first. It does not, by itself, end the second.

Once you separate those two, the question becomes answerable — and the answer is not a number of years.

Eligibility is not access

The regulation makes the distinction explicit, and it does so in an unexpected place — the reporting obligation:

“Any adverse information from or about the employee must continue to be reported while the employee maintains eligibility for access to classified information, even when access to classified information has been administratively terminated.”

32 CFR § 117.10(i)

Read that carefully. It contemplates a person who maintains eligibility while their access has been administratively terminated. Those are two states, tracked separately, with different rules. Almost every page ranking for this question answers as though they were one thing on one clock.

Where the 5 and 10 years came from

Reinvestigation and continuous vetting follow the guidance of the applicable Cognizant Security Agency. The regulation itself prescribes no number of years.

32 CFR § 117.10(b)(5) — So "Top Secret lasts 5 years, Secret lasts 10" is not a rule you can point to in the current regulation. Those were periodic-reinvestigation intervals under the framework continuous vetting replaced.

So if someone tells you a Top Secret clearance is “good for five years”, ask which provision says so. The reinvestigation intervals were real, but they were investigation scheduling, never an expiry stamp on your eligibility — and continuous vetting has replaced the schedule.

If you left a cleared job

Two different paragraphs apply depending on whether you stayed with the employer, and neither one mentions time.

Break in access — still with the same employer

“There are circumstances when a contractor administratively terminates an employee's access to classified information solely because of no current requirement for such access. If the employee again requires access to classified information and has been in the contractor's continuous employment, and the employee again requires access to classified information, the contractor may provide access to classified information without further investigation, based on CSA guidance, so long as the employee remains eligible for access to classified information and has a current investigation of a scope that meets or exceeds that necessary for the access required and no new derogatory information is known.”

32 CFR § 117.10(i)

Everything in that sentence is a condition, not a deadline:

• Continuous employment with the same contractor
• Still eligible for access
• A current investigation whose scope meets or exceeds the level required
• No new derogatory information known

Break in employment — you left

“(1) When an employee had a break in employment and now requires access to classified information, the contractor may provide access to classified information based on CSA guidance provided the employee remains eligible for access to classified information and has a current investigation of a scope that meets or exceeds that necessary for the access required. (2) The contractor may not provide access to classified information to an employee who previously was eligible for access to classified information, but has had a break in employment that resulted in a loss of eligibility without a new eligibility determination by the CSA.”

32 CFR § 117.10(j)

After a break in employment there are two outcomes, and which one you are in is a question of fact about your record rather than a question of elapsed time. If eligibility survived and the investigation still covers the level, access can be granted on CSA guidance. If the break caused eligibility to lapse, no access is possible until the CSA makes a new determination.

This is the paragraph people are really asking about when they ask whether their clearance is still good after leaving a job — and it names no time limit at all.

What a new employer is meant to do

Reciprocity means a gaining agency or contractor is meant to accept the investigation and adjudication you already have rather than start again. SEAD 7 requires agencies to check the databases first, and to accept adjudications at the same or higher level, subject to enumerated exceptions.

“Any current eligibility determination for access to classified information that is based on an investigation of a scope that meets or exceeds that necessary for the required level of access will provide the basis for a new eligibility determination. The prior investigation will be used without further investigation or adjudication unless the CSA becomes aware of significant derogatory information that was not previously adjudicated.”

32 CFR § 117.10(h); SEAD 7 (effective 9 November 2018)

SEAD 7 puts it in one sentence: “Reciprocity is the acknowledgement and acceptance of an existing background investigation conducted by an authorized investigative agency; the acceptance of a national security eligibility adjudication determined by an authorized adjudicative agency; and the acceptance of an active national security eligibility determination granted by an executive branch agency.” It also names the exceptions — the first being where “New information of national security adjudicative relevance has been reported, developed, or known to agency officials since the last investigation” since the last investigation.

There is no 24-month window

This one is worth stating flatly, because it is repeated everywhere and it changes how people behave: the belief that you have exactly two years to land another cleared role before your clearance dies.

No such window appears in the regulation. "24 month", "two years" and "reinstat" occur zero times in 32 CFR § 117.10, and "24 month", "two year" and "break in service" occur zero times in SEAD 7. What governs is whether eligibility is current, whether the investigation's scope covers the access required, and CSA guidance.

Elapsed time is not irrelevant in practice — an older investigation is more likely to fall short of the scope required, and your CSA’s guidance may itself use a period. But that is CSA guidance, which varies, and not a rule you can read off the regulation. Anyone quoting you a firm deadline should be able to name the provision.

Continuous vetting replaced the calendar

Under continuous vetting an enrollee is monitored continuously rather than re-investigated on a schedule, and a reinvestigation is triggered by an alert. A five-year Personnel Vetting Questionnaire update is being rolled out in place of the old periodic cycle.

The NISPPAC minutes of 18 March 2026 record the shift in plain terms. Of one agency’s programme: it “no longer runs routine PRs on a standard calendar cycle; instead, a PR is initiated only if an anomalous alert or questionable information is flagged by the continuous vetting pipeline” (Said of the Department of Energy's programme in the NISPPAC minutes — an illustration of the model shift, not a government-wide rule.) The same minutes note “the rollout of the Personnel Vetting Questionnaire (PVQ) in late February to 2,500 users for 5-year updates”, which is the mechanism replacing the old cycle.

If you are enrolled in continuous vetting, "when does my clearance expire" has no answer in the form the question assumes. Nothing expires on a date; your record is being checked continuously.

One genuine exception exists to all of this. Temporary eligibility — what used to be called an interim clearance — is the single case in this regulation with an outer time limit, and it is one year rather than the 180 days widely repeated online. See interim security clearance for how temporary eligibility works, and why the widely-quoted 180 days is the wrong figure.

What is not in the regulation

Four claims that dominate the search results for this question, each with what the source documents actually say:

A note on what we could not verify: DCSA published updated industry continuous-vetting guidance dated 16 April 2026, and dcsa.mil serves it only to human browsers — it returns HTTP 403 to every automated request, and the Internet Archive rate-limited our attempts. We therefore quote nothing from it. Everything above rests on the Code of Federal Regulations, the Security Executive Agent Directives, and NISPPAC minutes published by the National Archives.

One related question the regulation does answer clearly, via DCSA’s published billing rates rather than the CFR: what an investigation costs, and who pays it. The short version is that you do not. See security clearance cost.