Protecting Your Systems

As the infrastructure that makes your organization operational, your systems are an essential element of your organization’s Culture of Cyber Readiness.

For Leaders
Protect critical assets and applications.

Information is the life-blood of any business and is often the most valuable of a business’ intangible assets.

Know where this information resides, know what applications and networks store and process that information, and build security into and around each.

For IT Professionals and Service Providers
For this Essential Element, organizations living the Culture of Cyber Readiness have undertaken these Essential Actions:

Learned what is on their network Maintained inventories of hardware and software assets to know what is in-play and at-risk from attack.
Leveraged automatic updates for all operating systems and third-party software.
Implemented secure configurations for all hardware and software assets.
Removed unsupported or unauthorized hardware and software from systems.
Leveraged email and web browser security settings to protect against spoofed or modified emails and unsecured webpages.
Created application integrity and whitelisting policies so that only approved software is allowed to load and operate on their systems.

Learn More: https://www.cisa.gov/cyber-essentials