Volume A: Executive Summary
Challenge Organizations must protect information from unauthorized access and disclosure. Data breaches, whether large or small, can have widespread operational, financial, and reputational impacts on an organization. When a data breach occurs, data confidentiality can be compromised through unauthorized exfiltration, leaks, or spills of data to unauthorized parties, including the general public. It is crucial for organizations to identify and protect assets to prevent breaches. When breaches occur, organizations must be able to detect the ongoing breach and begin executing a response and recovery plan that leverages security technology and controls.
Benefits The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed this guide to help organizations implement strategies in response to data confidentiality attacks. This NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guide demonstrates how organizations can develop and implement appropriate actions to detect, respond to, and recover from a data confidentiality cybersecurity event. It includes numerous technology and security recommendations to improve your organization’s cybersecurity posture.
Approach This publication is part of a series of projects that seek to provide guidance to improve an organization’s data security within the context of the CIA triad. The CIA triad represents the three pillars of information security: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. This practice guide focuses on data confidentiality: the property that data has not been disclosed in an unauthorized fashion. Data confidentiality concerns data in storage, during processing, and while in transit.
Volume B: Approach, Architecture, and Security Characteristics
Introduction NCCoE is a collaborative center where industry organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions work together to address the most pressing cybersecurity issues in the business world. This public-private partnership enables the creation of practical cybersecurity solutions for broad, cross-sector technology challenges. Through consortia under Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs), including technology partners—from Fortune 50 market leaders to smaller companies specializing in information technology security—the NCCoE applies standards and best practices to develop modular, adaptable example cybersecurity solutions using commercially available technology.
NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guides NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guides (Special Publication 1800 series) target specific cybersecurity challenges in the public and private sectors. They are practical, user-friendly guides that facilitate the adoption of standards-based approaches to cybersecurity. They show members of the information security community how to implement example solutions that help them align with relevant standards and best practices, and provide users with the materials lists, configuration files, and other information they need to implement a similar approach.
Architecture and Security Characteristics This guide details the architecture and security characteristics used to protect data confidentiality. It includes strategies for detection, response, and recovery from data breaches. The guide also provides descriptions of how these solutions can be integrated into an organization’s existing cybersecurity infrastructure to enhance resilience against data breach incidents.
Volume C: How-To Guides
Implementation Guide This guide provides detailed steps for implementing the cybersecurity solutions outlined in Volumes A and B. It includes system configurations, deployment of detection, response, and recovery tools, and integration of these solutions into the organization’s existing risk management practices. This guide is designed to help organizations adopt and implement effective cybersecurity strategies to protect their data confidentiality.
Feedback Provision As a public-private partnership, NCCoE is always seeking feedback on its practice guides. They are particularly interested in seeing how businesses apply NCCoE reference designs in real-world scenarios. If you have implemented the reference design, or have questions about applying it in your environment, please email ds-nccoe@nist.gov. All comments are subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act.
Challenges and Solutions
Organizations face the challenge of protecting information from unauthorized access and disclosure. Data breaches, whether large or small, can have widespread operational, financial, and reputational impacts on organizations. It is crucial for organizations to identify and protect assets to prevent breaches. When data breaches occur, data confidentiality can be compromised through unauthorized exfiltration, leaks, or spills of data to unauthorized parties, including the general public.
The NCCoE at NIST developed this guide to help organizations implement strategies in response to data confidentiality attacks. This guide demonstrates how organizations can develop and implement appropriate actions to detect, respond to, and recover from data confidentiality cybersecurity events. It includes numerous technology and security recommendations to improve an organization’s cybersecurity posture.
This guide can help organizations detect data confidentiality losses, respond to data breach events using their security architecture, and recover from data breaches in a way that minimizes financial and reputational damage. It is part of a series of projects aimed at providing guidance to improve data security within the context of the CIA triad, which includes confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
Security Architecture Characteristics
NCCoE is a collaborative center where industry organizations, government agencies, and academic institutions work together to address cybersecurity issues. This partnership enables the creation of practical cybersecurity solutions for broad, cross-sector technology challenges. Through consortia under CRADAs, including technology partners, NCCoE applies standards and best practices to develop modular, adaptable example cybersecurity solutions using commercially available technology.
NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guides (Special Publication 1800 series) target specific cybersecurity challenges in the public and private sectors. They are practical, user-friendly guides that facilitate the adoption of standards-based approaches to cybersecurity. They show members of the information security community how to implement example solutions that help them align with relevant standards and best practices, and provide users with the materials lists, configuration files, and other information they need to implement a similar approach.
This guide details the architecture and security characteristics used to protect data confidentiality. It includes strategies for detection, response, and recovery from data breaches. The guide also provides descriptions of how these solutions can be integrated into an organization’s existing cybersecurity infrastructure to enhance resilience against data breach incidents.
Implementation Guide
This guide provides detailed steps for implementing the cybersecurity solutions outlined in Volumes A and B. It includes system configurations, deployment of detection, response, and recovery tools, and integration of these solutions into the organization’s existing risk management practices. This guide is designed to help organizations adopt and implement effective cybersecurity strategies to protect their data confidentiality.
As a public-private partnership, NCCoE is always seeking feedback on its practice guides. They are particularly interested in seeing how businesses apply NCCoE reference designs in real-world scenarios. If you have implemented the reference design, or have questions about applying it in your environment, please email ds-nccoe@nist.gov. All comments are subject to release under the Freedom of Information Act.
Benefits of Adopting the Solution
This guide can help organizations detect data confidentiality losses within their organization. It can also assist in responding to data breach events using the organization’s security architecture and recovering from data breaches in a manner that lessens financial and reputational damage. It is part of a series of projects aimed at providing guidance to improve data security within the context of the CIA triad, which includes confidentiality, integrity, and availability.
This publication is part of a series of projects that seek to provide guidance to improve an organization’s data security within the context of the CIA triad. The CIA triad represents the three pillars of information security: confidentiality, integrity, and availability. This practice guide focuses on data confidentiality: the property that data has not been disclosed in an unauthorized fashion. Data confidentiality concerns data in storage, during processing, and while in transit.
Case Studies and Security Scenarios
NCCoE worked with members of the Data Confidentiality Community of Interest to develop a diverse (but not comprehensive) set of security scenarios to test the reference implementation. These scenarios are detailed in Volume B, Section 5.2. These scenarios include exfiltration of encrypted data, spear phishing campaigns, ransomware, accidental emails, lost laptops, privilege misuse, and eavesdropping.
Privacy scenarios are also described, such as user login with multi-factor authentication, authentication to a virtual desktop interface solution, monitoring by a network detection solution, and monitoring by a logging solution. The security and privacy characteristic analysis involves assumptions and limitations, as well as various scenarios that demonstrate how these solutions can be used to address different security and privacy threats.
Future Build Considerations
This guide also includes considerations for future builds. It covers the need to continue developing and updating cybersecurity solutions to keep up with evolving threats and technology. Organizations should consider how the technologies in this architecture will align with technologies in their existing infrastructure.
In this regard, NCCoE encourages organizations to adopt solutions that conform to applicable standards and best practices. This guide provides a security control map that maps the security characteristics of this solution to cybersecurity standards and best practices. This helps organizations ensure that they comply with relevant regulations and standards.
Conclusion
This guide provides comprehensive guidance on detecting, responding to, and recovering from data breaches that compromise data confidentiality. By following this guide, organizations can improve their cybersecurity posture, protect sensitive data, and minimize the financial and reputational impacts of data breach incidents. This guide also provides a foundation for the development of robust cybersecurity policies and procedures, and helps organizations comply with relevant information security regulations and standards.
Thus, this guide becomes an essential tool for information security professionals, risk managers, and decision-makers across various industry sectors. It provides practical steps and standards-based solutions that organizations can implement to protect their data confidentiality from ever-evolving threats.
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