Cyber Essentials Section 3 - Access Control

The Cyber Essentials is a UK government-backed framework which is designed to assist organisations in protecting themselves against common threats.  The Cyber Essentials provides a basic cyber security foundation that can serve as a stepping stone to a more comprehensive zero-trust approach. The Cyber Essentials is built on 5 key components that, when implemented correctly, can reduce cyber risk.  The five key components are:

1. Firewalls and Boundary Devices
2. Secure Configurations
3. Access Control
4. Malware Protection
5. Patch Management

Tenable has released a series of reports, that focuses on each of the five basic technical controls, which organisations can use to help strengthen their defences against the most common cyber threats.

The focus of this report is Section 3 - Access Control.  This key requirement supports the goal of reducing an organisation’s risk from the most common cyber threats. The Cyber Essentials focuses on preventing high impact attacks, such as phishing, malware infection, and unauthorized access.  Strong access control can limit the number of accounts which attackers can compromise, ensuring that individuals only have access which is required to perform job functions. 

This key component applies to all the following in scope devices: Boundary Firewalls, Desktop Computers, Laptops, Routers, Servers, Iaas, PaaS, and SaaS devices.  

This report contains the following chapters:

• Executive Summary - The Executive Summary contains a table of the Top 50 account related concerns.  This table provides a quick overview of the top concerns in the environment along with the total count for each concern that has been identified.

• Users and Groups - The Users and Group section contains a summary component and host iterator displaying host details such as the IP, DNS Name, OS CPE, and MAC address of the host in question, followed by a table displaying the any users and groups which have been identified on the host.  User Accounts, System Accounts, Domain Accounts and additional information may be available, including Plugin details which collected the data.

• Default Accounts - The Default Accounts section contains a summary component and details related to default accounts, credentials, users, and/or passwords.  The information contains host data as well as plugin output, synopsis, descriptions, and steps to remediate, if data is available.  The plugin output contains detailed information related to the finding.  Information is only displayed for failed findings or findings which require manual intervention. 

• Account Compliance Concerns - The Account Compliance Concerns  section contains a summary component and details related to compliance findings related to any account related compliance check.  The information contains host data as well as plugin output, synopsis, descriptions, and steps to remediate, if data is available.  The plugin output contains detailed information related to the finding.  Information is only displayed for failed findings or findings which require manual intervention.