Although no set of mitigation tactics can offer an absolute shield against all cyber threats, it is advised that organizations adopt the eight fundamental mitigation strategies outlined in the ACSC’s “Strategies to Mitigate Cyber Security Incidents” as a foundational approach. These core strategies, collectively referred to as the Essential Eight, substantially enhance the difficulty for malicious actors to infiltrate systems. Introduced in 2017, the Essential Eight represents a progression from the Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD) Top Four recommendations.
The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) is an Australian government agency responsible for foreign signals intelligence, cybersecurity, and information warfare. The ASD provides assistance and guidance to Australian government agencies and organizations to enhance their cybersecurity practices and protect their digital assets from cyber threats.
The “Essential Eight” is a set of cybersecurity strategies developed by the ASD as part of their Australian Government Information Security Manual (ISM). These strategies are designed to mitigate the most common cyber threats faced by organizations and are intended to improve the overall cybersecurity posture of government agencies and critical infrastructure operators in Australia. The Essential Eight is not only applicable to government agencies but is also considered a valuable framework for private sector organizations to bolster their cybersecurity practices.
Clear and Prioritized
Cybersecurity can be overwhelming with new terms, unfamiliar concepts, and countless options and opinions. The Essential Eight simplifies this by offering a focused set of actions that any organization can follow to better protect their data, systems, and people.
Essential Eight Maturity Model
The Essential Eight strategies are structured around a maturity model that aligns with different levels of threat actor sophistication. This allows you to select the maturity level that matches your organization’s threat profile and invest gradually to reach your cybersecurity goals.
Contribute to Building a Cyber Resilient Australia
The Australian Government is heavily investing to drive the adoption of the Essential Eight across a wide range of organizations, from critical infrastructure and defense to government sectors.
The idea is that when more organizations establish strong cybersecurity practices, it strengthens Australia’s overall cyber resilience. Recently, the Department of Home Affairs introduced a national strategy with the goal of making Australia a global leader in cybersecurity by 2030.
The Essential 8 checklist comprises eight core mitigation strategies which provide the targeted direction necessary to secure your technology where it matters.
The Essential Eight consists of the following mitigation strategies:
This relates to the level of application control and constraints you have over user applications and the ability for staff to execute unapproved and malicious programs on workstations. This includes .exe, DLL, scripts and installers.
Updating third-party applications quickly is essential for ensuring the latest security updates and patches are in place. For example, using the latest version of applications and patches of web browsers, Microsoft Office, Java and PDF viewers. This requires frequent use of security vulnerability scanners to detect missing patches and updates as well as removing solutions that are no longer supported by their vendors.
This is the amount of freedom your users have to run macros in Microsoft Office applications. Most users should have macros blocked as default unless they have a specific organisational requirement. Only allow vetted macros, either in ‘trusted locations’ with limited write access or digitally signed with a trusted certificate.
Limitations should be placed on user applications. At its most basic, web browsers should block Flash, ads and Java, with users unable to change these settings. Disable unneeded features in Microsoft Office (such as OLE), and in web browsers and PDF viewers. Internet Explorer 11 should also be disabled.
Tightly manage administrative privileges and access to operating systems and applications based on user duties. This includes regularly revalidating requests for privileged access to systems and applications, blocking privileged accounts from accessing the internet and using separate operating environments for privileged and unprivileged users. Privileged accounts should not be used for reading email and browsing the web.
This focuses on keeping operating systems up to date to ensure that OS patches, updates, and security mitigations for internet-facing services are applied within two weeks of release. All computers and network devices with ‘extreme security risk’ vulnerabilities should be patched within 48 hours. Security Vulnerability scanners should also be used to identify any missing patches, and any OS that is no longer vendor supported should be replaced.
Enforce MFA for all privileged access. Turn on MFA for VPNs, RDP, SSH and other remote access, and for all users when they access an important data repository. Maturity starts by enforcing MFA for all users before they access internet-facing services and third-party providers.
Perform daily backups of important new or changed data, software and configuration settings. All unprivileged accounts should be restricted to their own backup environments. Store backups disconnected from the Internet and retain them for at least three months. Test restoration initially, annually and whenever IT infrastructure changes.
Implementing these strategies can significantly enhance an organization’s resilience against cyber threats, reduce the attack surface, and improve incident response capabilities. The Essential Eight is considered a foundational approach to cybersecurity and is part of a broader effort to ensure the security and integrity of digital systems in Australia.
Organizations of all types and sizes increasingly rely on online platforms to store sensitive data. Cyberattacks pose significant risks, not only to the compromised organizations but also to their customers, other businesses, and the public at large. Consequently, organizations in Australia will soon be required to disclose their Essential Eight Maturity Model and demonstrate compliance with these fundamental cybersecurity measures.
The Essential Eight Maturity Model assesses your organization’s defense capabilities against cyberattacks and evaluates the likelihood of being targeted. Compliance with these measures is critical to safeguarding your organization and those who depend on you.
Essential 8 Compliance Requirements
Organizations of all types and sizes increasingly rely on online platforms to store sensitive data. Cyberattacks pose significant risks, not only to the compromised organizations but also to their customers, other businesses, and the public at large. Consequently, organizations in Australia will soon be required to disclose their Essential Eight Maturity Model and demonstrate compliance with these fundamental cybersecurity measures.
The ACSC Essential Eight Maturity Model assesses your organization’s defense capabilities against cyberattacks and evaluates the likelihood of being targeted. Compliance with these measures is critical to safeguarding your organization and those who depend on you.
The organisation has critical weaknesses in their overall cyber security, lacking dedicated cyber security defences and internal expertise or outside partners to protect themselves. Hackers can easily steal data or shut down business operations using widely available tools
The organisation has basic protection in place to guard against non targeted attacks using widely available tools. Level One organisations often have no reason to expect to be targeted by hackers and tend to get swept up in large-scale opportunistic attacks targeting a group of organisations using publicly-available exploits to gain application control of internal systems.
The organisation has more sophisticated internal capabilities and external vendor and partner support due to their awareness of potential cyberthreats. These organisations are specific targets to hackers, who invest time and money into phishing and social engineering to bypass multi-factor authentication. Users with elevated and administrative privileges are often singled out and targeted by hackers who trick them into launching malicious applications that weaken an organisation’s cyber defences or allow full access to internal systems.
These organisations tend to be larger and more mature, with a robust internal IT security team as well as external vendors and partners logging, monitoring and patching data security systems regularly. Hackers invest significant time and money to compromise these organisations and often use custom tools that make them much harder to detect and guard against through simple patching.
Different organisations ultimately require different strategies and solutions to ensure adequate cybersecurity. The best way to determine your path to compliance is to arrange an IT security assessment.
The Essential Eight is a carefully curated and regularly updated set of cybersecurity controls developed from the Australian Signals Directorate’s (ASD) expertise. It was created to help organizations like yours build strong defences against the cyber threats targeting Australian businesses and the incidents they cause. Based on Total Solutions IT’s experience, some of the most common cyber incidents affecting Australian businesses include:
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The updated ACSC Essential Eight maturity model was released in July 2021, offering Australian businesses advice on the application of ACSC Essential Eight strategies. Utilizing a scoring range of 0-3, this model aids in gauging your organization’s security stance and suggests logical progression points for bolstering your protective measures.
Before, organizations were tasked with selectively adopting strategies from the ACSC Essential Eight. However, the present model emphasizes the comprehensive adoption of all eight strategies as a unified approach, owing to their synergistic qualities and heightened attention to the ever-changing threat environment.
Are you aware of your vulnerabilities?
Identifying the right path and recognizing optimal methods while crafting a security approach can prove to be challenging.
Being an internal member, confronted with an ever-shifting landscape of threats, it becomes complex to appraise your surroundings impartially for risk identification. Given the constraints of time and resources, determining the starting point and deciding what holds priority during the establishment and execution of a security plan can pose difficulties.
Expert Tip: Enlist an external specialist to evaluate your surroundings for a comprehensive understanding of your security stance.
How many security tools are under your management?
Numerous enterprises have embraced standardized security solutions, which frequently have areas of overlap or gaps within the security framework. These individual solutions lack the incorporation into your wider IT ecosystem that ensures your organization’s security.
Overseeing security through a multitude of tools generates a intricate setting, complicating the detection of warning signs amid a multitude of alerts. This results in difficulties in swiftly addressing problems, thereby increasing the margin for mistakes.
Expert Suggestion: Avoid excessive complexity in your security approach – elegance is the utmost form of sophistication.
How much are you paying for the current situation?
Clients lacking a uniform security approach face greater vulnerability to attacks, heightened attack repercussions, and delayed restoration. Violations can lead to substantial financial and legal fines due to failure in adhering to regulations.
As much as 88% of reported breaches pertain to contact details, encompassing personal data like names, residential addresses, contact numbers, and email addresses. This varies from identity particulars, which were exposed in 60% of breaches, encompassing specifics like birthdates, passport particulars, and driver’s license information.
Pro Tip: Streamline your security approach for enhanced management of your defensive strategy.
Using the ACSC Essential Eight guidelines as a foundation, Total Solutions IT has developed an Essential Eight Evaluation aimed at aiding organizations in comprehending and enhancing their security stance.
The Essential Eight Evaluation serves to offer insight into your present security maturity and protective position, aligning closely with the ACSC Essential Eight principles.
The process will commence with a discovery meeting to gain insights into your business, technological landscape, and primary objectives. Subsequent technical workshops will concentrate on topics such as application whitelisting, application and operating system patching, multi-factor authentication, administrator rights management, regular data backups, Microsoft Office macro oversight, and application fortification.
The Total Solutions IT Information Assurance Specialist will amass and scrutinize data concerning your implementation of each of the aforementioned measures. Elaborate findings will be synthesized into a report that offers tangible proof of your current security status, coupled with expert suggestions for enhancement. A broad project plan will be presented, outlining recommended endeavors, estimated expenses, timelines, as well as the requisite software, hardware, and services. The report will be conveyed to you for your assessment, succeeded by a presentation led by the evaluator to delve deeply into your outcomes.
Feel free to reach out to us to gain more insights into embarking on an Essential Eight Assessment.
What is an example of cyber security incidents?
Examples of cyber security incidents might include: A computer system breach. Cyber security incidents also include accessing, using, or misusing systems, software, or databases without authorization. To protect systems from cyber attacks we provide cyber security services from small to big organisations.
What are managed services in cyber security?
A managed IT service provider provides services for managing security devices and systems.
What is penetration testing in cyber security?
Social engineering penetration testing involves attempting to persuade or trick users to give away their sensitive information, such as usernames and passwords.
What are the security controls in cyber security?
Security controls are mechanisms used to prevent, detect, and mitigate cybersecurity threats and attacks. There are three main categories of security controls:
Management security controls
Operational security controls
Physical security controls
What is a mitigation strategy?
Security risk mitigation strategy involves using security policies and processes to lower the overall risk or impact from a cybersecurity attack.
Why is it important to use mitigation strategy?
We use mitigation strategy to prevent malware delivery and execution. To prevent cyber security incidents, and to mitigate their effects, recovery strategies should be put into place.
Total Solutions IT provides modern and secure digital workplaces, focusing on the B2B market with comprehensive services in Telecommunications, Internet, Cloud, IT Managed Services, and Cyber Security.
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