OFFENSIVE SECURITY - PENETRATION TESTING - RED TEAMING - ETHICAL HACKING
In today's digital landscape, protecting sensitive information and IT infrastructure is more critical than ever. Cybersecurity frameworks provide structured approaches to managing and reducing cybersecurity risks. Let's explore what these frameworks are and why they're essential for organisations of all sizes.
A cybersecurity framework is essentially a system of standards, guidelines, and best practices to manage risks that arise in the digital world. Think of it as a blueprint that organisations can follow to build and improve their cybersecurity posture. These frameworks help create a common language for understanding, managing, and communicating cybersecurity risks both internally and externally.
Frameworks provide structured guidance on how to protect critical assets, detect threats, respond to incidents, and recover from breaches - all while maintaining compliance with relevant regulations.
With cyber threats constantly evolving in sophistication and frequency, organisations need systematic approaches to protect themselves. Here's why frameworks matter:
• Risk Management: They help identify, assess, and prioritize risks in a consistent manner.
• Standardisation: They establish common security practices across an organisation or industry.
• Compliance: Many frameworks align with legal and regulatory requirements, simplifying compliance efforts.
• Communication: They provide a common language for discussing security with stakeholders, partners, and customers.
• Cost-effectiveness: Following established frameworks can be more efficient than developing security practices from scratch.
The identify function helps organisations develop an understanding of their business context, resources that support critical functions, and related cybersecurity risks. This includes asset management, business environment analysis, governance, risk assessment, and risk management strategy.
The protect function outlines appropriate safeguards to ensure delivery of critical infrastructure services. It supports the ability to limit or contain the impact of potential cybersecurity events through access control, awareness training, data security, protective technology, and regular maintenance.
The detect function enables timely discovery of cybersecurity events through anomaly detection, continuous monitoring, and detection processes. Organisations must be able to identify suspicious activities quickly to minimize damage.
The respond function includes activities to take action when a cybersecurity incident is detected. It encompasses response planning, communications, analysis, mitigation efforts, and improvements based on lessons learned.
The recover function identifies appropriate activities to maintain resilience and restore capabilities impaired by a cybersecurity incident. It focuses on recovery planning, improvements, and communications to return to normal operations as quickly as possible.
By implementing these core components, organisations can develop a comprehensive cybersecurity program that protects against threats while enabling business operations to continue with minimal disruption.
Developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, this voluntary framework consists of standards, guidelines, and best practices to manage cybersecurity-related risk. It's organized around the five core functions: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.
This international standard provides requirements for an information security management system (ISMS). It offers a systematic approach to managing sensitive company information through risk assessment, security design, and implementation. ISO 27001 is the specification for an ISMS, while ISO 27002 provides the code of practice.
The Center for Internet Security Controls is a set of 18 prioritized safeguards to mitigate the most common cyber attacks. They're organized into three implementation groups to help organisations focus on the most important actions first, making them accessible to organisations of all sizes.
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act establishes standards for protecting sensitive patient health information. It requires appropriate safeguards to protect the privacy of personal health information and sets limits on the uses and disclosures of such information without patient authorisation.
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard applies to organisations that handle branded credit cards. It includes requirements for security management, policies, procedures, network architecture, software design, and other protective measures for cardholder data.
The General Data Protection Regulation is a European Union regulation on data protection and privacy that applies to all organisations handling EU citizens' data. It focuses on giving individuals control over their personal data and simplifying the regulatory environment for international business.
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification is a unified standard for implementing cybersecurity across the Defense Industrial Base. It combines various cybersecurity standards into one framework with five maturity levels that range from basic cyber hygiene to advanced practices.
System and Organisation Controls 2 is a voluntary compliance standard for service organisations that specifies how organisations should manage customer data. The standard is based on five "trust service principles": security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy.