Streamline Regulation Mandates With NIST CSF and Secure Workload

Regulations are often a contentious topic. While some argue they hinder innovation by introducing excessive bureaucracy, others contend that the absence of clear rules can lead to unquantified risks with wide-reaching consequences—from consumers and organizations to entire markets.

However, there are moments when both sides of the debate align—and cybersecurity is one of those cases.

But you may wonder, why cybersecurity? What is happening in this space that creates the required synergies? The answer is that there are two main drivers for this:

• The rising frequency and sophistication of ransomware attacks have severely impacted organizations, causing reputational, financial, and in some cases, human or critical infrastructure damages
• Underinvestment in cybersecurity tools and practitioner skills

These reasons are precisely where regulations play a critical role: They aim to address these gaps by enforcing good security standards, imposing penalties for non-compliance, and requiring organizations to allocate resources for prevention, detection, and incident response.

Fortunately, regulatory bodies are already acting. In the United States, for example, HIPAA ensures the protection of patient data within the healthcare sector, while PCI DSS governs the security of card payment systems in the commercial space.

Of particular importance are two major regulations emerging from the European Union, both designed to significantly improve cybersecurity resilience and risk management across sectors:

• Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA)
• Network and Information Security Directive (NIS2)

However, many organizations face significant challenges when it comes to implementing these regulatory mandates. Often, the language used in such regulations is high-level and lacks prescriptive guidance, making it difficult to translate requirements into actionable steps. Additionally, organizations may not have the right tools, processes or infrastructure in place to effectively implement and operationalize these standards.

This raises a critical question: How can organizations achieve compliance in a practical, scalable way?

NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 to the Rescue

NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 offers valuable guidance for organizations looking to manage and mitigate cybersecurity risks. While it doesn’t prescribe specific solutions, it provides a solid structure for translating high-level business objectives into actionable technical requirements.

Here is where you can leverage any cybersecurity tool using NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 to implement those technical requirements, given the tool has the necessary capabilities and functionalities to address them.

Enter Cisco Secure Workload.

Cisco Secure Workload is a holistic security solution designed to deliver in-depth application workload visibility and protection across on-premises and multicloud environments. Secure Workload focuses on three main use cases:

• Zero Trust Microsegmentation: Using agent and agentless approaches, Secure Workload can discover workloads based on labels, automatically discover and suggest segmentation policies based on traffic flows, validate and test the policy without any operational impact, and enforce the dynamic policy on multiple enforcement points such as host-based firewalls, Data Processing Units (DPUs), network firewalls, load balancers, and built-in cloud security controls.
• Vulnerability Detection and Protection: Utilizing an agent, Secure Workload provides visibility into the application workload runtime, enabling the detection of vulnerable packages and vulnerable container images. It then leverages this information using vulnerability (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) attribute-based policies to quarantine workloads or perform virtual patching via Secure Firewall.
• Behavioral Detection and Protection: Secure Workload monitors running process for changes in behavior and a detailed process tree and process snapshot. It detects anomalous behavior using MITRE ATT&CK or with custom forensic rules. By leveraging Secure Firewall’s Rapid Threat Containment, protection of both agent and agentless workloads can be achieved.

As you can see, Secure Workload offers the breadth and depth of capabilities needed to serve as a core cybersecurity tool. But the key question remains: How can we effectively correlate and map these features to specific technical requirements?

Mapping DORA and NIS2 to NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0

DORA and NIS2 requirements are often high-level, requiring IT teams and NetSec teams to interpret and translate them into actionable technical controls for implementation.

To streamline this process, organizations can leverage NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 as a foundational reference. By mapping its guidance to Secure Workload capabilities, we can effectively translate those same requirements into practical, tool-driven implementations aligned with DORA and NIS2 mandates.

The Microsegmentation Journey With NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 and Secure Workload

Microsegmentation redefines traditional network security by shifting the perimeter to the individual asset. It creates micro-perimeters across multi-cloud environments, isolating and securing each workload independently.

This approach has become a practical foundation for implementing zero trust architectures, as it enables the enforcement of least privilege access at the network level.

However, operationalizing microsegmentation remains a significant challenge. It requires close collaboration across various teams—security, networking, operations, and compliance—which can create complexity and friction. For a deeper dive into these challenges and how you can overcome them, I recommend reading the blog post “Business Leader’s Guide for a Successful Microsegmentation Project” by my colleague Brijeshkumar Shah.

This is where Cisco Secure Workload becomes the toolset that can enable organizations to successfully implement microsegmentation, while also supporting compliance efforts. By fostering collaboration across teams and integrating with existing processes, Secure Workload helps make zero trust achievable and scalable.

Navigating Compliance with the Right Approach and Tools

Regulatory and compliance mandates can be complex and challenging to navigate. However, with the right approach—translating business requirements into actionable technical controls—and the right toolset to implement them, the path to achieving compliance becomes far more manageable. To see how Cisco Secure Workload can support your compliance journey, check out my Cisco Live session, where I showcase live demos and practical examples of how this solution can be applied to meet regulatory requirements effectively.

Want to learn more? Check out the Cisco Secure Workload product page.

We’d love to hear what you think! Ask a question and stay connected with Cisco Security on social media.

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