Navigating the complexities of NIST compliance is crucial for any organization, particularly those that handle sensitive information or wish to do business with the federal government. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provides a robust framework to help businesses manage and mitigate cybersecurity risks. This guide will provide a clear overview of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, its key components, and how to effectively implement it.
To mitigate the plethora of cyber threats today, the National Institute of Standard and Technology (NIST) provides a set of security controls for contractors. The NIST cybersecurity framework was developed to manage and mitigate critical systems and infrastructure from contractors.
Organizations that want to do business with the government have to comply with the set security standards known as NIST Compliance.
What is NIST Compliance?
This cybersecurity framework provides the necessary structure for organizations to securely supply, operate, or own their critical infrastructure. By establishing essential controls and basic processes for all federal contractors, NIST Standards form the basis of a strong cybersecurity program.
The most prominent framework for federal contractors is outlined in NIST Special Publication 800-171. This publication sets out specific security requirements for protecting Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) when it is processed, stored, or transmitted by non-federal systems. The framework's goal is to create a cohesive cybersecurity strategy that helps businesses identify, detect, protect, respond, and recover from cyber threats.
Even for organizations not directly contracted by the government, adopting the NIST framework is considered a best practice for enhancing cybersecurity maturity and establishing a strong information security program.
This framework is anchored in five key pillar, including identify, detect, protect, respond, and recover. Let’s take a closer look at each pillar in more detail.
5 Key Pillars of NIST
The NIST framework is built on five key pillars that serve as a lifecycle for cybersecurity risk management.
Identify
Any cybersecurity process should begin with an understanding of the digital assets. Businesses must first identify what to protect. This pillar provides the NIST guidelines on how to map out key assets that cyber risks could impede and classify them according to priority. This process helps organizations to understand where to prioritize efforts according to their specific business needs.
Detect
This pillar defines the suitable procedures to identify the occurrence of cyber risks. NIST’s detection strategy, which incorporates penetration testing, enables organizations to detect events and anomalies in real-time. The pillar focuses on continuous monitoring controls of essential systems to identify threats proactively.
Protect
This NIST pillar aims to safeguard critical infrastructure and service delivery with the proper protections. It aims to limit and contain the impact of any cyber threat. Examples of protection measures involve establishing security controls, employee training and awareness, continuous systems maintenance, and other protection efforts.
Respond
This pillar requires organizations to have a rapid response strategy in place to manage cybersecurity events. It outlines the actions that security teams should take to minimize any damages caused by breaches.
Recover
This pillar gives organizations a recovery plan in case they suffer security breaches. It involves restoring normal business processes disrupted by security breaches. It also provides strategies to build a resilient and risk-proof cyberspace.
These critical components of any successful cybersecurity program help organizations manage their digital space with proper security measures in place. The NIST pillars form the backbone of strong cybersecurity standards and can provide businesses with actionable items to improve their cybersecurity maturity.
Overview: NIST Compliance Requirements
To become NIST 800-171 compliant, organizations must implement 14 specific security requirements, which cover a wide range of cybersecurity controls.
- Access Control: Limiting system access to authorized users and enforcing the principle of least privilege.
- Awareness and Training: Ensuring all personnel receive proper security training and understand their roles in protecting CUI.
- Audit and Accountability: Creating and retaining audit logs to track user actions and hold individuals accountable.
- Configuration Management: Establishing secure configurations for all IT products and systems.
- Identification and Authentication: Verifying the identity of users and devices before granting access.
- Incident Response: Developing a plan to handle all security incidents promptly.
- Maintenance: Performing routine system maintenance, including regular software patching and hardware updates.
- Media Protection: Securing and sanitizing all physical and digital media that contain CUI.
- Personnel Security: Screening and vetting personnel before they are granted access to sensitive information.
- Physical Protection: Safeguarding IT systems and physical environments from unauthorized access and damage.
- Risk Assessment: Periodically assessing systems and processes to identify vulnerabilities and risks.
- Security Assessment: Continuously evaluating and updating security controls to ensure their effectiveness. This is where penetration testing services are crucial.
- System and Communications Protection: Protecting the integrity of information in transit and at rest.
- System and Information Integrity: Identifying and correcting flaws, and protecting against malicious code.
How to Make Your Organization NIST Compliant
These requirements are essential for organizations looking to supply the federal government. Here are critical tips to become NIST 800-171 compliant:
- Locate, identify, and categorize CUI
- Implementing penetration testing programs
- Implement all security controls
- Encrypt user data
- Train your employees
- Monitor data continuously
- Assess your system for risks and vulnerabilities
These steps help protect CUI and ensure your business is NIST 800-171 compliant.
How Penetrations Testing Helps Achieve NIST Compliance
NIST requires suppliers to operate in a secure environment. Organizations contracted by federal agencies must update their vulnerability scanning tools to detect embedded threats. Through penetration testing, business can proactively detect vulnerabilities and threats to their data security. Pentesting programs help organizations remain on top of their risk and security assessments, essential requirements for compliance.
How Cobalt Helps Achieve NIST Compliance
At Cobalt, we perform penetration testing on your business applications, cloud networks, and data systems to detect flaws and vulnerabilities. Our penetration testing as a service (PtaaS) platform offers businesses the opportunity to conduct testing on a more regular basis to ensure all threats to data and system security are detected.
Contact us today to get started with an easy-to-use penetration testing experience.
