The NIST cybersecurity framework can organize and improve the whole cybersecurity program. The program comes with a set of guidelines and policies to help the enterprises build and improve their cybersecurity posture. This framework provides recommendations to the companies to help them stay prepared for any kind of cyber threats and helps in responding to these incidents.

This cybersecurity framework is drafted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to address the lack of standards present in the field of cybersecurity. This framework is considered to be the gold standard for building a cybersecurity program. Even if you have already a cybersecurity program working for you, this NIST cybersecurity framework will help you get the top-level security management tools to assess the risks throughout the organization.

Core Functions of NIST Cybersecurity Framework

Identify

This function is linked with the groundwork for an effective cybersecurity strategy and it also helps in developing an understanding of this framework among the system, people and data. The cybersecurity framework stresses the understanding of business context when it comes to staying consistent with the risk management and all the cybersecurity risks.

Another function that is done in the identifying section of the cybersecurity framework is to identify risk tolerance. Moreover, it brings the idea of supply chain risk management and offers strategies to prioritize the constraints and tolerances and also to support any kind of risk decisions. Lastly, but one of the most important factors in identification is the identification of physical and software assets of an organization to understand the extent of risk and the resources present at hand to save it.

Protect

The protect function helps in ensuring the delivery of the important infrastructure and supports the ability to limit or contain the impact of any kind of cybersecurity threat.  Some of the important functions that are done in this group are:

• The framework will implement a protection feature for Identity Management and Access Control.
• It will provide awareness to the staff by giving them the required training.
• The NIST Cybersecurity framework helps in the protection of the resources through maintenance.
• It helps in ensuring the security and resilience of the system and offers a managing technology to ensure consistency with the organizational policies.
• The cybersecurity framework enables the organizations to establish data security protection which helps to protect the confidentiality and integrity of the information of the system.

Detect

Organizations need to detect the different cybersecurity incidents and the NIST framework will help the organization in doing it. Moreover, the detection feature of the cybersecurity framework will help in identifying the occurrence of any such event at the right moment.

This detection feature of the cybersecurity framework helps in detecting any kind of abnormality in the events that are occurring and helps in understanding the kind of impact they will make.

It provides such abilities to the organizations to monitor cybersecurity events and it can aid in detecting the effectiveness of a protective measure.

Respond

The response function focuses on the taken action that was done when a cybersecurity threat incident happened and it supports the ability to contain that impact. This function of the cybersecurity framework manages the communication with the internal and external stakeholders.

Moreover, it analyzes the incident to ensure effective response and determines the impact of the incident on the organization’s data and information.

Recover

This function determines the maintenance of plans for resilience and the ability of the cybersecurity framework to restore the capability or services that got damaged during the cyber-attack. This function ensures that the recovery planning process and procedure are to protect the system and get it back to running. It also helps the organizations to understand the impact and how their policies reacted to such attack so that future planning can be made.