What is CIS  Control?

The CIS Controls are a set of best practices for securing IT systems and data. These controls are a prioritized and actionable set of cybersecurity guidelines designed to help organizations prevent cyber attacks, detect malicious activity, and respond to incidents effectively.

The CIS Controls are broken down into three categories:

• Basic Controls (which address foundational aspects of cybersecurity like asset management and vulnerability management)
• Foundational Controls (focused on improving monitoring, defenses, and secure configurations)
• Organizational Controls (which aim to enhance governance, incident response, and overall organizational readiness for cybersecurity)
• There are currently 18 CIS Controls (as of the latest version), each with specific action items that organizations can implement to protect themselves against cyber threats. These controls are widely recognized and used by businesses, governments, and institutions across the globe to enhance their cybersecurity programs.

Why is CIS Control important?

The CIS Controls are important because they minimize the risk of data breaches, data leaks, theft of intellectual property, corporate espionage, identity theft, privacy loss, denial of service and other cyber threats.

As security professionals, we have access to an array of security tools and technologies, security standards, training, certifications, vulnerability databases, best practices, security controls, checklists, benchmarks and recommendations.

The CIS Controls have evolved from the consensus list of security controls that security experts believe are the best defensive techniques to prevent data breaches and mitigate the damage caused by cyber attacks.

Beyond blocking the unauthorized access, the CIS controls also address detecting indicators of compromise and preventing additional attacks.

The CIS Controls help us answer questions like:

• What are the most critical areas to establish a risk management program?
• Which defensive steps provide the greatest value?
• How can we track our risk management program maturity?
• How can we share our insights into attacks and attackers and identify root causes?
• Which tools are best used to solve which problems?
• Which CIS controls map to my organization's regulatory and compliance frameworks?