The Visible Infrared Imager Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is the high-resolution Earth imager of the United States National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS). VIIRS has its heritage in three sensors currently collecting imagery of the Earth, including the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer, and the Operational Linescan Sensor. First launch of the VIIRS sensor comes on NASA's NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP). Data collected by VIIRS will provide products to a variety of users that support applications from the real-time to long-term, climate change timescales and VIIRS has been uniquely designed to satisfy this full range of requirements. Cloud masks derived from the automated analyses of VIIRS data are critical data products for the NPOESS program. In this presentation, the VIIRS Cloud Mask (VCM) performance requirements are highlighted, along with the algorithm developed to satisfy them. The expected performance for the VCM algorithm is shown against global synthetic cloud simulations and manual cloud analyses of VIIRS proxy imagery. These results show the VCM analyses will satisfy the performance expectations of products created from it, including land and ocean surface products, cloud microphysical products, and automated cloud forecast products. Finally, minor deficiencies that remain in the VCM algorithm logic are identified.