Five Functions, One Goal. How The NIST Framework Keeps You Secure.

Cybersecurity is serious business. In 2022 alone, the FBI reported over $10 billion in internet crime losses. In response to this ever-growing threat, it’s especially important to strengthen your cybersecurity posture.

What’s the best way to protect yourself? Many organizations take an approach based on well-known cybersecurity frameworks and supporting standards. For our customers, we find the most successful of these frameworks to be the National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) Cybersecurity Framework (“CSF”). This framework provides a proven model to evaluate organizational capabilities and apply strategic improvements. Following these standards help strengthen the cybersecurity of your organization.

NIST CSF Five Functions

The framework is divided into five key functions: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.

Identify – Develop an organizational understanding to manage cybersecurity risk to systems, assets, data, and capabilities.

Protect – Develop and implement the appropriate safeguards to ensure delivery of services to protect the organization’s critical assets from cybersecurity threats.

Detect – Develop and implement the appropriate controls to identify the occurrence of cybersecurity events/incidents as they occur. This includes implementing monitoring and detection systems to alert the organization to potential threats and allow it to respond quickly.

Respond – Implement the appropriate responses to act against detected cybersecurity incidents. This includes having a well-defined incident response in place to ensure the organization can effectively address cyberattacks. It also gives the organization the power to effectively contain, investigate and remediate in order to mitigate/minimize the damage of a potential breach.

Recover – Implement the appropriate activities to maintain plans for resilience and to restore any capabilities impaired by a cybersecurity incident, including implementing measures to restore normal operations and mitigate the impact of the incident on the organization.

This list represents high-level definitions of each of the five functions. For full descriptions of the control categories and subcategories supporting these functions, please review Appendix A: Framework Core of the NIST CSF.

Benefits of NIST CSF

The foremost benefit of adopting cybersecurity standards is helping to prevent or minimize cyberattacks. The combination of adopting and conforming to proven cybersecurity controls makes it harder for attackers to penetrate your environment, and provides capabilities to mitigate and respond to cyberattacks when they do occur.

Additional benefits of tailoring NIST CSF to your organization includes but is not limited to the following:

• NIST is a common language which provides understanding across your organization to communicate, identify and address cybersecurity threats and issues
• This framework may be adopted and customized by organizations of any size (e.g., large, medium and small) and across any industry to help meet the needs of organizations in their current state, whether their cybersecurity capability is mature or virtually nonexistent
• It assists with education and awareness of the security staff responsible for protecting your organization from cyberattack exploitation

How Seneca Resources Can Help

Applying proven cybersecurity frameworks such as NIST CSF can be a tall task, even for well-funded organizations. With decades of experience providing cybersecurity services (including assessments, definition of roadmaps, incident response, and training/mentoring client staff in best practices), Seneca Resources helps public sector, private sector and 500 Fortune customers align their capabilities to proven cybersecurity frameworks.

As an award-winning cybersecurity advisory firm, Seneca Resources has an impressive portfolio of security offerings and a deep understanding of the changing threat landscape. Utilizing industry standards, guidelines, best practices, (e.g. NIST Cybersecurity Framework, ISO 27000 family, etc.) and world class technologies, Seneca customizes solutions to address specific risks and needs for its clients.

Furthermore, Seneca leverages our strong relationships with strategic technology partners specializing in cybersecurity, including industry leaders such as Mandiant, Splunk, Check Point Software Technologies, Veracode, Tenable, Commvault, Schneider Electric, Dell EMC, etc.

We not only advise clients on methods and technologies but we’ll also help implement them, as proven through our successful engagements with valued customers. We’ve supported clients in varied industries such as Human Services, Healthcare, Transportation, Construction, and more. Some of the work provided to these organizations have included:

• Advisory services to ensure proper security measures were established and aligned to NIST CSF and Special Publication 800-53 Rev. 4
• Training and mentoring of Cybersecurity officers and staff
• Providing testing of various applications and systems, and to identify risks, and areas for improvement
• Advising on advanced understanding of business processes, internal control risk management, IT controls and related standards
• Performing well controlled vulnerability exploitation/penetration testing on applications, network protocols, and databases
• Assessment of independent Audit and Security Assessment reports
• Providing a detailed review of existing security governance policies, standards and procedures

Through the success of our cybersecurity engagements and our relationships with clients, Seneca Resources strives to live up to our reputation as a well-respected, trusted advisor.

Contact Us

For more information about Seneca’s Cybersecurity services, please contact us at (703) 390-9099, or info@senecahq.com.