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NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF)
Sustainable approach to manage and reduce cybersecurity risk
Created through collaboration between industry and government, the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), acts as a voluntary framework that consists of standards, guidelines, and practices to promote the protection of critical infrastructure.
Designed to be flexible, repeatable, and cost-effective, NIST’s CSF helps enterprises manage and reduce cyber-risk, as well as foster risk and cybersecurity management communications among internal and external stakeholders. The framework is organized into six core functions: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover, and Govern. Each function includes a set of categories and subcategories that provide guidance on how to implement effective cybersecurity practices. It includes a set of implementation tiers that measure an organization’s level of cybersecurity maturity and assess progress towards achieving its cybersecurity goals.
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The NIST Cybersecurity Framework Approach Addresses:
Although the CSF was designed with Critical Infrastructure (CI) in mind, it is extremely versatile and can be used by organizations of all sizes, sectors, and maturities. The NIST Cybersecurity Framework helps enterprises introduce:
- Cyber Resilience – Through the NIST CSF enterprises can anticipate, withstand, recover from, and adapt to adverse conditions, stresses, attacks, or compromises on systems that use or are enabled by cyber resources regardless of the source.
- Next-Generation Technologies – The CSF encourages technological innovation by aiming for strong cybersecurity protection without being tied to specific offerings or current technology.
- Preventive Controls – By going one step further and automating data protection and access management across applications, enterprises can prevent unauthorized access and data breaches.
- Enhanced Compliance – The Cybersecurity Framework enables streamlined regulatory compliance and strengthens data access governance with a common language that applies to all applications.
- Reduced Costs – The framework helps lower costs of cybersecurity risk management by prioritizing expenditures to maximize the impact of the investment.
Why NIST Cybersecurity Framework ?
The NIST Cybersecurity Framework offers a common language and systematic methodology for managing cybersecurity risk. The framework was designed as a ‘cookbook’ which can offer guidance on how to establish and/or complement an enterprise’s cybersecurity program and risk management processes.
The process of creating Framework Profiles (alignment of the Functions, Categories, and Subcategories with the business requirements, risk tolerance, and resources of the organization) provides organizations with the opportunity to identify areas where existing processes may be strengthened, or new processes can be implemented.
The pairing of CSF Profiles with an implementation plan allows an enterprise to take advantage of the CSF by enabling cost-effective prioritization and communication of improvement activities among organizational stakeholders or for setting expectations with suppliers and partners. Moreover, Profiles and associated implementation plans can be leveraged as strong artifacts for demonstrating due care.
The Implementation Tiers component of the CSF helps enterprises by providing context on how an organization views cybersecurity risk management. The Tiers guide companies to consider the appropriate level of rigor for their cybersecurity program, which can be leveraged as a communication tool to discuss mission priority, risk appetite, and budget.
To learn about NIST’s technologies via its special publications, explore our NIST special publications page.
NextLabs Solution
The NextLabs Zero Trust Data Security helps organizations accelerate their implementation of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework’s six key functions: identify, protect, detect, respond, recover, and govern to manage cybersecurity risks effectively. Using the technologies from NIST’s special publications among its own patented technologies, NextLabs addresses the six key functions as follows:
Secure applications, API, & microservices access, externalize entitlement, protect data, & simplify access management
Persistent protection of critical files stored and shared anywhere, cloud payload, and endpoint device
Zero Code Approach to protect data & secure access independent of application with data masking, FPE, & data segregation
- Identify: NextLabs helps organizations implement the Identify function through enforcers, which augment an application’s underlying security model, leveraging data classification by automatically identifying sensitive data types based on the app’s data model, then organizes this data The enforcers discern and collect relevant access activity data to facilitate centralized correlation and detection of anomalous activity, allowing potential threats to be recorded.
- Protect: To implement the Protect function, NextLabs enforcers persistently protect files across the information cycle using attribute-based policies. Attribute-based policies dynamically grant permissions for specific actions, such as viewing, editing, copying, forwarding, printing, and extracting content, based on the recipient’s identity. NextLabs provides persistent control of access and usage of digital information stored in files regardless of where it exists. It can safeguard and monitor business-critical documents such as intellectual property and product design, wherever it lives or travels – across devices, data centers, apps, cloud services, and on-premises.
- Detect: To implement the Detect function, NextLabs offers centralized logging and monitoring, that enables enterprise-wide activity logging to promptly identify any suspicious activity and anomalies. With NextLabs, organizations can track and store real-time user and data access activity across apps and services in a central audit repository, simplifying the process of auditing security controls.
- Respond: NextLabs supports the Respond function with its patented dynamic authorization technology. Because the attribute-based policies are dynamically evaluated at the time of the data access request, if there are threats detected, that information can be automatically incorporated into the policy decision and enforcement.
- Govern: With NextLabs Zero Trust Data Security, organizations can implement the Govern function by establishing dynamic security policies to protect business-critical assets and mitigate the risk of a cybersecurity breach. These policies are then centrally managed and deployed across all applications to enforce least privilege access. Centralized policy management allows for increased agility as policies can be easily modified or updated without making significant changes to the underlying system or application. This flexibility also allows organizations to adapt quickly to evolving business requirements, regulatory changes, or new security needs.
NextLabs Zero Trust Data Security is not only used to implement NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework, but is also used by enterprises to enable CMMC compliance (based on NIST SP 800-171)
CSF & Intelligent Enterprise
Implementation of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework allows organizations to make the transition to intelligent enterprises without compromising on data security. The best practices defined by NIST provide a guide for organizations as they plan their migrations to more digitized operations, and as they collaborate more using shared resources. The framework’s implementation tiers also provide a roadmap for organizations to measure their progress and continually improve their cybersecurity. This structure makes it easier for organizations to implement the changes to become more intelligent than if they had to develop cybersecurity plans from scratch.
