NIST

Best Practices for security and privacy controls for risk management

What is NIST?

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a non-regulatory agency of the United States Government founded in 1901 that produces technology, standards, and metrics to drive innovation in the US science and technology sectors. The NIST publishes the Special Publication 800-series, which provides guidance documents and recommendations. They published Special Publication 800-53 as part of the above series, which catalogs 20 security and privacy control groups. NIST recommends that organizations in their risk management strategies should implement these security and privacy controls. These controls talk about access control, training for security awareness, incident response plans, risk assessments, and continuous monitoring.

Why Cloudanix?

With the increase in cloud technologies, there has been a rise in data breaches and cyber-attacks. Cyber-attacks and data breaches cause significant damages to a company’s reputation and credibility. NIST is beneficial because it aids organizations to initiate a risk management process or review their current one. NIST may be a voluntary framework, but if you are an organization seeking to reduce its overall security risks, you should be NIST compliant. That’s where Cloudanix comes into the picture. Cloudanix automates audits that perform various checks consisting of different rules on a wide variety of recipes that we provide. For instance, our AWS recipe of CloudWatch Audit contains several rules like AWS Config Changes Alarm, Authorization Failures Alarm, CMK Disabled or Scheduled for Deletion Alarm, CloudTrail Changes Alarm, Console Sign-in Failures Alarm, IAM Policy Changes Alarm, and many more. These audit rules help you comply with the NIST-800-53 AC-2 (12)(a) clause that stresses monitoring information system accounts for organization-defined atypical usage. Our audit lets you know in the audit report if you are violating these rules and, effectively, this clause of NIST. We have many other recipes and rules that ensure you stay NIST compliant and follow the best security practices while we are taking care of your security audits!

NIST + Cloud

With the rise in data breaches in this digital age, the NIST compliance framework provides us with the existing standards, guidelines, and best practices in its guide. NIST was created to provide a customizable guide on how organizations should manage and reduce cybersecurity-related risks. The NIST 800-53 controls set the baseline for security for federal agencies and contractors and are continuously updated to address new threats and prevent major cybersecurity incidents. Although it is essential to know that just adhering to NIST will not make your organization 100% secure, NIST guidelines begin by telling organizations to use a value-based approach to protect their assets. Achieving NIST compliance will help you make your organization’s cloud and IT infrastructure secure. NIST is also a foundation protocol for companies when achieving HIPAA or FISMA compliance.