Cybersecurity conversations often focus on defensive technologies like firewalls, endpoint detection and response (EDR), and SIEM platforms. Though these technologies are important for a powerful security program, over-focusing on these solutions can lead some to believe that security is something your team does to a network environment.
If systems are not securely configured from the start, even the best security stack can leave organizations exposed to cyber threats, ransomware, insider risk, and compliance failures.
A secure environment starts with properly configured operating systems, cloud platforms, applications, network devices, and endpoints. This is where the CIS Benchmarks come in.
What are CIS Benchmarks?
Center for Internet Security (CIS) Benchmarks are globally recognized best-practice configuration guidelines designed to help organizations securely configure and harden their IT systems.
These benchmarks provide step-by-step recommendations for reducing system vulnerabilities, minimizing attack surfaces, and improving overall cybersecurity posture.
Currently, over 100 benchmarks are available for assets in 25+ technology groups, including:
- Microsoft Windows
- Linux operating systems
- AWS cloud devices
- Cisco networking devices
- Kubernetes
- Docker
- Databases
- Web browsers
- Mobile devices
Three things separate CIS Benchmarks from other security standards:
- They relate specifically to the configuration of existing assets. They don’t cover security defenses like firewalls and EDRs.
- They are developed by consensus among experts, including SMEs, security vendors, the CIS benchmarking team, and the global security community via the CIS Workbench.
- While not a regulatory requirement, most prominent compliance frameworks point to CIS Benchmarks as the industry standard, making them an excellent means of achieving both security and compliance objectives.
How CIS Benchmarks Are Developed
CIS Benchmarks are created through a community-driven review and approval process.
The development lifecycle typically includes:
- Identifying the need for a benchmark
- Defining the technology scope
- Drafting configuration recommendations
- Peer review by cybersecurity experts
- Public feedback and testing
- Revision and ongoing maintenance
The collaborative nature of this process ensures that the benchmarks established are practical, realistic, and applicable across industries and use cases.
What Are CIS Benchmark Levels?
CIS Benchmarks are organized into two different levels based on security requirements and operational impact. Your level will depend upon your organization’s security and compliance needs. Let’s take a closer look at the levels to help you determine where your organization falls.
Level 1: Foundational Security
Level 1 recommendations are designed to:
- Reduce risk quickly
- Minimize attack surface
- Maintain operational functionality
- Avoid disrupting business workflows
These standards can be considered the minimum recommended baseline for most organizations.
Level 2: Defense-in-Depth Security
Level 2 recommendations provide a stringent set of standards intended for environments where security is prioritized over convenience or flexibility. These controls tend to be more costly and labor-intensive to implement.
These configurations may:
- Restrict functionality
- Require additional administrative effort
- Increase implementation complexity
STIG Profiles
Some CIS Benchmarks also include mappings aligned with Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs).
Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) STIG-aligned configurations are commonly used in government and defense environments that require highly rigorous security standards.
All CIS Benchmarks are freely available as PDF downloads from the CIS website. These guidance documents are extremely thorough, with some running to 800+ pages. Each recommendation maps to at least one of the CIS Controls, a set of broader security requirements that look beyond asset configuration.
Related Read: System Hardening with DISA STIGs and CIS Benchmarks
Who Uses CIS Benchmarks?
Organizations across industries and geographies use CIS Benchmarks to achieve security and compliance objectives.
The CIS Benchmarks are the only best-practice security configuration guides developed and accepted by government, business, industry, and academic institutions. They are also globally recognized, making them more widely applicable than country-specific standards such as HIPAA or FedRAMP.
That said, the benchmarks are especially important in heavily regulated industries and industries governed by a regulatory framework. Organizations in the healthcare, financial services, and government sectors are likely to use them.
Why are CIS Benchmarks so widely used? In addition to the security and compliance value they provide, the benchmark documentation is freely available to all industries and organizations. To get started, an organization must download the relevant PDFs from the CIS website.
Why CIS Benchmarks Are Important
Cybersecurity is a broad and complex field. To make matters worse, operating systems and applications are often highly customizable, with thousands of ports, services, and settings to configure. If organizations were forced to decide on the ideal configuration of every asset, it would take years to build a secure business environment.
CIS Benchmarks provide a clear set of standards for configuring common digital assets — everything from operating systems to cloud infrastructure. This removes the need for each organization to ‘reinvent the wheel’ and provides them with a clear path to minimizing their attack surface.
CIS Benchmarks From a Security Perspective
From a cybersecurity standpoint, CIS Benchmarks help organizations:
- Build and maintain a security profile in line with industry best practices.
- Eliminate configuration settings that are known to be insecure.
- Protect the organization from known threats.
- Offload unnecessary cyber risk by narrowing the attack surface to only what is necessary.
CIS Benchmarks From a Compliance Perspective
From a compliance standpoint, CIS Benchmarks map directly to many major standards and regulatory frameworks, including NIST CSF, ISO 27000, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and more.
Maintaining configurations aligned with CIS Benchmarks can help organizations:
- Accelerate compliance readiness
- Improve audit outcomes
- Demonstrate security best practices
- Reduce compliance gaps
- Minimize financial and operational risk associated with non-compliance
For organizations governed by a security framework, maintaining configurations in line with the CIS Benchmarks is a huge step in building sustainable compliance programs.
Additional CIS Security Resources
In addition to the CIS Benchmarks, the Center for Internet Security provides other cybersecurity resources.
CIS Controls
CIS Controls are a prioritized set of cybersecurity safeguards designed to help organizations defend against common threats. While CIS Benchmarks focus on recommendations specific to system configurations, CIS Controls provide broader guidance related to:
- Asset inventory
- Vulnerability management
- Access control
- Monitoring
- Incident response
CIS Hardened Images
CIS Hardened Images are virtual machine images that are pre-configured operating system configurations that already meet CIS Benchmark baselines. CIS updates and patches these images regularly and are available in profiles for both CIS Benchmark levels.
How to Implement Benchmarking in Your Organization
Organizations typically take one of two approaches when implementing CIS Benchmarks:
1. Manual Implementation
Organizations can download the benchmarking documents directly from the CIS website and implement the suggestions manually.
This approach has the advantage of being free to start. However, it is often extremely labor-intensive, and it's difficult to ensure continual compliance — particularly as configurations are updated, and new assets are added.
2. Automated CIS Benchmark Compliance Tools
While it is theoretically possible to implement CIS Benchmarks manually, most organizations use an automated CIS Benchmark tool. An automated solution makes it faster and easier to implement and maintain compliance with the CIS Benchmarks.
Solutions typically include scanning functionality to quickly identify areas of non-compliance. By running scans regularly, an organization can prevent misconfigurations from creeping in. Automation makes CIS Benchmark implementation significantly more scalable and sustainable.
Implementing and Maintaining CIS Benchmarks
Cimcor developed CimTrak to help organizations strengthen system integrity, improve security posture, and maintain compliance with CIS Benchmarks and other regulatory standards.
Using continuous monitoring and real-time change detection, CimTrak assesses the current state of configurations across your environment and compares them against all relevant CIS Benchmarks. When CimTrak identifies a misconfiguration or non-conformance issue, it raises an alert and provides clear action steps to re-establish control.
How CimTrak Helps Organizations with CIS Benchmarks
CimTrak helps organizations:
- Achieve and maintain compliance with CIS Benchmarks. CimTrak saves organizations countless hours compared to a manual implementation of benchmark PDFs.
- Ensure continuous compliance. Manual implementation of the benchmarks (and even most toolsets) only ensures ‘point-in-time’ compliance. CimTrak ensures continuous compliance by providing real-time monitoring and alerts across your entire environment.
- Reduce and eliminate entry points that an attacker could exploit. For example, by removing unnecessary files, closing unnecessary ports, and disabling unnecessary services.
- Improve performance. Systems work more efficiently when unnecessary files and functions are removed.
Download the CIS Benchmarks Solution Brief today to learn more about how CimTrak can help your organization achieve security and compliance objectives with CIS Benchmarks.
