What are CIS Security Benchmark tools?

The CIS Security Benchmarks division provides well-defined, unbiased and consensus-based industry best practices to help organizations assess and improve their security. Resources include secure configuration benchmarks, automated configuration assessment tools and content, security metrics, and security software product certifications.

The Security Benchmarks division is recognized as a trusted, independent authority that facilitates the collaboration of public and private industry experts to achieve consensus on practical and actionable solutions.

The CIS Security Benchmarks Division develops and distributes:

  • Security Configuration Benchmarks - describe consensus best practices for the secure configuration of target systems and are developed via extensive collaboration with our volunteer consensus community. Configuring IT systems in compliance with these Benchmarks has been shown to eliminate 80-95% of known security vulnerabilities. The Benchmarks are globally used and accepted as the de facto user-originated standard for IT security technical controls. The Benchmarks are freely available for download in PDF format.
  • Security Metrics - offer enterprise IT and security teams insight into their own security process outcomes and are developed via extensive collaboration with our volunteer consensus community. The metrics are freely available to the public for download, including the CIS Quick Start Guide for Consensus Security Metrics.
  • The CIS-CAT Benchmark Assessment Tool - provides IT and security professionals with a fast, detailed assessment of target systems' conformance to CIS Benchmarks. By discovering any lack of conformance to CIS Benchmarks, CIS-CAT offers enterprises a powerful tool for analyzing and monitoring the security status of information systems and the effectiveness of internal security processes.

For a full list of resources offered, along with descriptions and examples, visit the CIS Security Benchmarks Security Resources page.

Last modified: March 20, 2024