ASD Essentials cybersecurity framework released

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has announced the launch of ASD Essentials, to replace the widely adopted Essential Eight framework to help organisations strengthen their resilience against an increasingly complex cyberthreat environment.

ASD says the Essentials gives Commonwealth entities, critical infrastructure owners and operators, and large organisations practical, threat-informed and prioritised measures to strengthen their cyber defences and better protect critical business functions and systems.

Building on the success of the Essential Eight, the Essentials evolves ASD’s guidance into a series of focused chapters that support a broader range of technology environments and organisational needs.

The first three chapters include:

• Essentials for enterprise IT: an evolution of the Essential Eight.
• Essentials for operational technology (OT): support for Australian critical infrastructure operators protecting their OT environments from cyberthreats.
• Essentials for cloud: support for organisations whose technology environment is delivered entirely through software-as-a-service (SaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS).
   

Together, these chapters establish the foundation of the Essentials series. With AI-focused guidance available, organisations can better consider AI-enabled systems within the context of their technology environments.

ASD says the Essentials enables organisations to strengthen their cybersecurity in a way that aligns with their risk profiles and operational requirements, while maintaining consistency with ASD’s best-practice advice and the Australian Government Information Security Manual.

Until associated regulatory changes are communicated by regulators, organisations should continue to meet their current regulatory obligations. During the transition period, ASD will continue to maintain both the Essential Eight and Essentials frameworks on cyber.gov.au, along with supporting resources and implementation guidance.

Partnership with industry

ASD says that industry consultation played a central role in developing the Essentials, in order to ensure that the guidance is practical, relevant and effective for Australian organisations at different levels of cybersecurity maturity.

ASD will continue to engage with industry, government and critical infrastructure stakeholders, ensuring its guidance remains responsive to emerging technologies and the changing threat environment.

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