CIS Controls
The pragmatic, prioritized cybersecurity controls developed by a global community of practitioners. Implementation Group tiers (IG1, IG2, IG3) let smaller organizations start where they are.
Mapped, monitored, and audit-ready.
Every CIS Controls control has a place in Talarity — with cross-mapping, automated evidence, and continuous validation.
Talarity's pre-built control library covering CIS Controls, with linked evidence, owners, and testing schedules.
Answer once, prove everywhere. Talarity's mapping engine reuses your evidence across every framework you run.
- Asset inventory (hardware and software)
- Vulnerability scan and patching cadence
- Account and access management logs
- Audit log review records
- Penetration test reports and remediation
Your CIS Controls dashboard
Every completed CIS Controls assessment updates this automatically — where you stand now, how that has changed, and which areas need work.
What gets easier with Talarity.
CIS Implementation Groups (IG1, IG2, IG3) are a great organizing principle — but mapping your current state against them by hand is a multi-day exercise.
Talarity ships CIS v8.1 with pre-tagged IG levels. Filter to IG1 if you're starting; layer IG2 and IG3 as you mature.
Safeguard-level scoring requires evidence that's contextualized to your environment.
Each safeguard has a structured evidence prompt — what to upload, what to attest to, what to link from automated systems. No guessing.
CIS RAM (Risk Assessment Method) is a separate workflow you'd otherwise spreadsheet.
CIS RAM is built in as an asset-valuation risk model. Run it alongside your CIS Controls assessment; both share the same data.
Cross-mapping CIS to your other frameworks (NIST CSF, ISO 27001) is painful when done manually.
Built-in mappings to NIST CSF, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and HIPAA. Implement a CIS safeguard once; satisfy the related requirements in every framework.
CIS Controls — common questions
- What are CIS Implementation Groups?
- Implementation Groups prioritise the Safeguards by organisational profile. IG1 defines essential cyber hygiene — the baseline every organisation should meet. IG2 adds Safeguards for organisations managing more sensitive data and greater operational complexity. IG3 covers organisations facing targeted attacks and holding data whose loss carries severe consequences. Each group is cumulative, so IG2 includes all of IG1.
- How do the CIS Controls relate to NIST CSF and ISO 27001?
- The CIS Controls are a prioritised set of defensive actions, whereas NIST CSF is an outcome-based framework and ISO 27001 certifies a management system. They are complements rather than alternatives: teams frequently use CIS to decide what to implement first and CSF or ISO to structure governance and reporting. CIS publishes mappings to both, so one implemented Safeguard can be evidenced against several frameworks.
- What changed in CIS Controls v8.1?
- v8.1 was an update to v8 rather than a restructuring. It refined Safeguard descriptions and asset class definitions, added a governance security function to align more explicitly with the Govern function introduced in NIST CSF 2.0, and improved the supporting mappings. Organisations already implementing v8 do not need to rebuild their programme.
- Is CIS a certification?
- No. There is no CIS Controls certificate. It is a prioritised implementation guide, and its value is in sequencing — it answers what to do first when everything appears urgent. Evidence of implemented Safeguards is still what customers, insurers and auditors ask for, and that evidence maps onto the frameworks that do certify.
Working with CIS Controls
Step-by-step walkthroughs from the Talarity library.
- Compliance·6 min readSystem Configuration — turn a completed assessment into enforceable, drift-tracked baselinesEvery safeguard you scored in an assessment becomes an enforceable expected value. Talarity re-checks the observed state, flags drift, opens remediation automatically, and lets you attach evidence per control — so your controls stay implemented, not just documented once.
- Compliance·8 min readPackage your audit evidence once — for the auditor, regulator, or customerAn auditor asks for your evidence and it's scattered across framework reports, vendor attestations, policy sign-offs, and resilience tests. Evidence Distribution Packages assemble the signed artifacts you already produced into one immutable package, then hand it to each audience as a redacted, watermarked, time-limited copy — with a record of who received what.
- Compliance·7 min readFramework readiness to audit package — the whole cycle on one screenAudit prep usually means a spreadsheet scramble — chasing evidence, tracking which controls are covered, re-checking what's expired. Talarity keeps a live readiness picture for every framework (SOC 2, ISO 27001, CIS, and more) — coverage, gaps, evidence freshness — and packages it into an auditor-ready export in one click.
- Compliance·7 min readContinuous compliance is a tooling problem, not a process problemEvery compliance program eventually decides it needs to be 'continuous.' Most then try to fix it with process. The actual fix is upstream — in the tools that make evidence freshness a default, not a sprint.
Ready to ship CIS Controls?
Start a 7-day trial and run this framework end-to-end on your own evidence — then buy online in-app when you're ready.