The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) is a voluntary, risk-based framework developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology that provides organizations with a structured approach to managing and reducing cybersecurity risk. It is widely considered the gold standard for building comprehensive cybersecurity programs across industries and organizational sizes.
The framework integrates industry standards, guidelines, and best practices to help organizations communicate about and manage cybersecurity risk. Although voluntary for private sector organizations, federal agencies are required to implement this risk management approach. The framework is designed to be flexible, scalable, and applicable regardless of an organization's size, sector, or cybersecurity maturity level.
Three Components of the NIST Framework
Framework Core: The foundation of the NIST CSF consisting of five concurrent and continuous functions—Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover—that provide a strategic view of an organization's cybersecurity lifecycle. The Core translates cybersecurity activities into a common language accessible to both technical teams and business leadership.
Framework Implementation Tiers: Four tiers (Partial, Risk Informed, Repeatable, and Adaptive) that describe the degree to which an organization's cybersecurity risk management practices exhibit the characteristics defined in the Framework. Tiers help organizations understand their current posture and set targets for improvement.
Framework Profile: A customized alignment of the Framework Core with an organization's business requirements, risk tolerance, and available resources. Profiles enable organizations to establish a roadmap for reducing cybersecurity risk aligned with organizational and sector goals.
The Five Core Functions
Identify: Creates an organizational understanding of cybersecurity risk to systems, assets, data, and capabilities. Includes asset management, business environment analysis, governance processes, risk assessment, and risk management strategy development.
Protect: Develops and implements safeguards to ensure delivery of critical infrastructure services, covering identity management and access controls, security awareness training, data security, information protection processes, maintenance, and protective technology deployment.
Detect: Defines activities to identify cybersecurity events in a timely manner through continuous security monitoring, anomaly and event detection, and detection process implementation and testing.
Respond: Outlines activities to take action regarding detected cybersecurity incidents, covering response planning, communications, analysis, mitigation, and improvements based on lessons learned.
Recover: Identifies activities to maintain resilience and restore capabilities impaired due to cybersecurity incidents, including recovery planning, improvements, and communications to restore normal operations.