End-to-end compliance management service for Essential Eight

OVERVIEW

Understanding
Essential Eight

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) (that formed the Cyber Security Centre  (ACSC)) developed the Essential Eight to help organizations establish a baseline security posture that makes it difficult for cyber threats to infiltrate their defenses. As per the ASD, the implementation of Essential Eight must be based on the identification and planning of target maturity level as per an organization’s environment.  Explore how SharkStriker assists organizations in achieving their target Maturity level.

APPLICABILITY

On whom does the Essential Eight apply?

The Essential Eight is applicable to all the 98 Non-Corporate Commonwealth Entities (NCE). However, the government recommends all the business to implement Essential Eight as it is an effective means to be prepared against large scale cyber incident.

BENEFITS

Benefits of being Essential Eight compliant

Makes it challenging for adversaries to compromise systems
Helps organizations make quick recovery during cyber incidents
Prepares organizations to quickly and precisely respond to threats
Enhances data security with industry best practices

Enables organizations to manage cyber risks efficiently
Trains workforce against cyber threats
Decreases the possibility of operational disruption
Improves brand reputation

MATURITY LEVELS

Essential Eight Maturity Level Explained

Except for Maturity Level Zero, all the maturity levels are based on the levels of tradecraft (tactics, tools, techniques, and procedures) and targeting.

Organizations at this level are not yet serious about cybersecurity and have not implemented any notable security measures to improve their cybersecurity posture against the most immediate threats. They are targeted by threat actors who:

Use the most common tools, techniques, tactics, and procedures to orchestrate cyber attacks
Their cyber attacks target many victims without spending much time researching them

Organizations that face a fair amount of low to medium levels of cyber threats fall under this category. They are targeted by threat actors who:

Use widely used tools, techniques, tactics, and procedures to steal confidential data and gain control of the system
Focus on exploiting commonly found vulnerabilities targeting many unspecific victims
Deploy common social engineering techniques and seek to break privileges looking to destroy and erase data if they can.

Organizations falling under this category face threat actors one step above Maturity Level One threat actors. They are targeted by threat actors who:

Use tools, techniques, tactics, and procedures that are severe and complex.
Their targets are more specific than maturity level spending more time studying their targets.
They deploy more sophisticated technical and social engineering techniques to bypass security without being detected.

Organizations that face highly sophisticated threat actors fall in this category. They are targeted by threat actors who:

Use highly adaptive tools, tactics, techniques, and procedures that are highly complex and quite difficult to defend against
They spend more time studying their targets and are highly specific about them.
They deploy highly sophisticated technical and social engineering techniques to bypass security without being detected.

APPROACH

Here is how we can help an organization become Essential Eight compliant

1. Scoping

We assist organizations in identifying and planning their target Maturity level based on a detailed inventory of their infrastructure and identification of critical assets.

2. Risk and gap assessment

Our assessment is based on Essential Eight’s recommended assessment process guide based on the prioritized mitigation strategies developed by the Australian Signals Directorate. We assess the organization’s infrastructure and check for gaps in security controls, policies, and procedures against E8 recommendations based on their applicable Maturity level.

3. Risk treatment: development of policies. procedures, rules

We address the gaps identified by developing missing security policies, procedures, controls, and measures. We help implement Essential Eight’s recommended best practices, like setting up a mechanism for timely patching applications for vulnerabilities, hardening the user application, and establishing a mechanism for daily backups.

4. Awareness and training

We train and prepare the workforce with Essential Eight best practices and develop training sessions, offering the resources to bridge awareness gaps before they result in human error.

5. Compliance monitoring

We periodically assess the organization’s cybersecurity posture for gaps in security weaknesses and non-compliance and address the gaps with the latest cybersecurity best practices that align with E8 compliance.

E8 BEST PRACTICES

Essential Eight best practices we help implement

Setting up an effective patch management mechanism for a swift patching of applications and operations for vulnerabilities
Checking and ensuring that multi-factor authentication is used to authenticate users
Third-party online services that process, store, and communicate their organization’s sensitive and non-sensitive data
Organization’s online customer services that process, store, or communicate their sensitive customer data
Third-party online customer services that process, store, or communicate their organization’s sensitive customer data
Authenticate customers to online customer services that process, store, or communicate sensitive customer data
Ensure restriction of privileged access to systems and applications
Periodical reviews of application control rulesets and implementing Microsoft’s application block list for lower maturity levels
Check the use of newer and more secure V3 digital signatures for macros in Microsoft
application hardening using either the Australian Signals Directorate or vendor hardening guidance
Establish a mechanism for regular backups, ensuring that backups with access on a least privilege basis to a small group of trusted administrators