Are You Staying Ahead in Cybersecurity?

A solid network security strategy that enables you to stay ahead of threats is made up of multiple components, which can be a challenge for organizations of all sizes. Cyber-attacks increased by 47% in202f, with a 126% increase in ransomware attacks. To protect your organization, it’s important to use a structured approach to network security.

In 2024, NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) created an updated Cybersecurity Framework (CSF), the NIST CSF 2.0, which provides an industry-agnostic approach to security. It's designed to help companies manage and reduce their digital security risks. In July of 2025, NIST 2.0 has been further updated.

Building on the success of its predecessor, CSF 2.0 is a comprehensive update that offers a more streamlined and flexible approach to your network’s security. The goal of this guide is to simplify the framework as well as make it more easily accessible to small and large businesses alike.

What is the role of the NIST CSF?

The security role of NIST CSF 2.0 is found in the Core. The Core consists of five concurrent and continuous Functions. These are: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover. These functions provide a high-level strategic view of risks as well as an organization's management of those risks. This allows for a dynamic approach to addressing threats.

Identify

The first step in managing security and cyber threats is always identification, so this function involves identifying and understanding the organization's assets, cyber risks, and vulnerabilities. It's essential to have a clear understanding of what you need to protect. You can’t effectively install safeguards until you take stock of the importance of what you’re protecting and what you’re protecting it from.

Protect

The protect function focuses on implementing safeguards after you have identified assets and threats. These protections are to deter, detect, and mitigate risks, including measures such as firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and data encryption.

Detect

Early detection is the most important way to minimize the potential damage from a threat. The detect function emphasizes the importance of detection as well as having mechanisms to identify and report suspicious activity.

Respond

Once you have detected the threat, the respond function outlines the steps to take in the event of a security incident. This includes activities such as containment, eradication, recovery, and lessons learned.

Recover

This function is exactly what it sounds like: Recovery and restoring normal operations after an incident, including activities such as data restoration, system recovery, and business continuity planning.

What are NIST profiles?

The original 2024 update to CSF 2.0’s framework introduced the concept of Profiles and Tiers. These help organizations tailor their digital defense practices, customizing them to their specific needs, risk tolerances, and resources.

Profiles

Profiles represent the aligning of the Functions, Categories, and Subcategories into Profiles. They're aligned with the business requirements, risk tolerance, and resources of the organization.

A Profile enables organizations to establish a roadmap for reducing security risks that aligns well with organizational and sector goals, considers legal/regulatory requirements and industry best practices, and reflects risk management priorities.

What are the tiers of NIST profile?

Tiers

Tiers range from Partial (Tier 1) to Adaptive (Tier 4) and describe an increasing degree of rigor, and how well integrated security risk decisions are into broader risk decisions, and the degree to which the organization shares and receives security info from external parties. Arranging defenses into Tiers provides context on how an organization views digital security risks, as well as the processes in place to manage those risks.

Why do you think a document like the NIST CSF 2.0 is valuable to a cybersecurity analyst?

Enhanced Digital security Posture: By following the guidance in NIST CSF 2.0, your organization can develop a more comprehensive and effective program for complete network defense.

Reduced Risk: The overall framework can help your organization identify and mitigate security risks, which helps to reduce the likelihood of cyberattacks.

Better Compliance: Although it is important to assess your own mandatory compliances, NIST aligned CSF 2.0 with many industry standards and regulations, so adopting it can help your organization meet compliance requirements.

Improved Communication: This framework provides a common language for communicating about security risks, which can help improve communication between different parts of your organization and keep everybody reading from the same page.

Saving Money: This is the benefit that speaks loudest to typical business owners. NIST CSF 2.0 can help your organization save money by preventing cyberattacks and reducing the impact of those incidents that do happen.            

What is the first step in the NIST risk management framework?

There are a few things you can do to get started on a good footing with NIST CSF 2.0.

The first 6 NIST RMF Steps:
Step 1: Categorize/ Identify
Step 2: Select
Step 3: Implement
Step 4: Assess
Step 5: Authorize
Step 6: Monitor

CyberSaint provides more details on these 6 steps HERE.

It's also important to keep these concepts in mind as you go:

Familiarize yourself with the framework: Take the time to read through the NIST CSF 2.0 publication. Familiarize yourself with the Core Functions and categories.

Assess what you’re doing now: Take stock of your current overall security posture. This will help you identify any gaps or weaknesses.

Create an overall security plan: Once you’ve completed your assessment, develop a comprehensive plan. It should outline how you will put in place the NIST CSF 2.0 framework in your organization.

Help is available: If you need help getting started with NIST CSF 2.0 contact us at ITFIRM.COM. We’ll offer guidance and support.

If you follow these steps, you can easily begin to deploy NIST CSF 2.0 effectively within your organization. At the same time, you'll be improving your overall comprehensive digital posture.