The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has released a self-assessment tool to help organisations better understand the effectiveness of their cybersecurity risk management efforts.

The document is called Baldrige Cybersecurity Excellence Builder and is based on two of the main NIST resources, the organisational performance evaluation strategies from the Baldrige Performance Excellence Program and the risk management mechanism from the Cyber Security Framework.

First of all, the user is guided to detail its organization's distinctive charateristics and strategic situations related to cyber security with a series of questions defining the organisation's current approach to cyber security in the areas of leadership, strategy, customers, workforce and operations.

Finally, users can determine their organisation's cyber security level of maturity with a simple self assessment questionnaire. The completed evaluation can then lead to an action plan to upgrade cybersecurity practices and management, implement those improvements, and measure the progress and effectiveness of the process.

Source: www.nist.gov/baldrige