CIS Benchmarks provide standardized configuration best practices to reduce attack surfaces, strengthen compliance, and support secure operations across servers, endpoints, cloud, and applications. By implementing CIS-certified baselines, organizations can minimize misconfigurations, prevent drift, and improve audit readiness. Netwrix enhances this process with automated configuration monitoring, drift detection, and identity-first enforcement to sustain long-term security.
Maintaining a secure configuration across all IT assets is critical for cybersecurity, compliance, and business continuity. Even a single misconfiguration can lead to security breaches and operational disruptions, making it vital to enforce consistent policies across the environment.
The CIS Benchmarks are one of the most widely recognized frameworks for secure system configuration. Developed by the Center for Internet Security, these best practices are created and maintained by a global community of experts. They define what secure configurations look like for cloud platforms, operating systems, desktop applications, network devices, and more.
By following CIS Benchmarks, organizations gain practical guidance for hardening systems, reducing risk, and improving their overall security posture.
Why CIS Benchmarks Matter for Cybersecurity
In a field as complex and often abstract as cybersecurity, it’s best to rely on established standards that define which protections are needed and where. The CIS Benchmarks are among the most widely used of these best practices, offering a comprehensive approach to securely configuring IT environments, with benchmarks available for more than 25 different technologies.
In practice, the CIS Benchmarks are essential for reducing attack surfaces by fixing misconfigurations. As issues like unused ports or excessive administrative privileges are addressed, system efficiency improves and fewer vulnerabilities remain, enhancing operational security.
With this improved alignment, IT teams are better equipped to conduct system audits thanks to streamlined organization and specific audit guidelines within the Benchmarks. Audits also become easier because following these protocols strengthens compliance. Because the CIS Benchmarks define effective security best practices, they naturally support frameworks such as NIST, PCI DSS, HIPAA, and ISO 27001, all of which recognize CIS protocols as an industry standard in cybersecurity.
CIS Configuration and Hardening Explained
Following the secure system settings outlined in the CIS Benchmarks results in what is known as CIS Configuration, or a system setup aligned with CIS best practices. Usually, this is achieved with secure templates that provide an initial view of system settings configured according to CIS-certified standards.
Achieving CIS Configuration is essential for implementing a secure system configuration, a process known as “hardening.” Hardening your network is vital for establishing reliable protections, as secure configurations enable IT teams to eliminate and prevent misconfigurations and their associated vulnerabilities, maintain secure policies while preventing drift, and reduce the system’s overall attack surface. The fewer misconfigurations or insecure setups remaining on your system, the fewer opportunities adversaries will have for a successful attack.
Since this process is achieved through effective setting configuration, most systems can be secured. That said, it is most important to secure your organization’s critical systems, such as servers, firewalls, cloud environments, and workstations.
Once a system has been sufficiently hardened, it’s essential to keep a record of the baseline configuration used. These baselines act as an internal standard for what constitutes a secure configuration for your specific systems. This helps in analyzing your network during an audit or post-incident review and also provides your IT team with a backup of configurations to restore in case of unexpected changes.
CIS Benchmarks vs. CIS Controls
While CIS Benchmarks provide specific configuration guidelines for particular technologies, the CIS Critical Security Controls present prioritized strategic steps to enhance system security. These Controls are divided into specific actions that outline how to secure different areas of an organization’s IT environment. For example, Control 4 describes cyber defense best practices that help you set up and maintain correct configurations for both software and hardware assets.
These two similar components of CIS recommendations work together as a unified guide for system hardening. While the CIS Controls specify which protections are essential for addressing particular vulnerabilities, the CIS Benchmarks provide technology-specific best practices for implementing these policies.
Again, using Control 4 as an example, suppose you are trying to securely configure your enterprise assets and software. Since Control 4 covers this area of security, it would provide initial best practices to follow in a prioritized order to achieve secure configurations. The CIS Benchmarks, meanwhile, could then be implemented to apply these configurations to operating systems, server software, or any other specific technologies that need to be hardened.
Levels and Profiles of CIS Benchmarks
The CIS Security Benchmarks are a complete set of technology-specific security best practices divided into three levels of strictness based on the environment’s security needs.
Level 1: Minimal impact, basic security hygiene
Level 1 CIS configurations represent the most basic security levels, defining essential protection that every system should have. Because these benchmarks are among the simplest safeguards, they are easy to implement and rarely disrupt business operations or system availability.
Level 2: More stringent controls for advanced environments
The second level of CIS Benchmarks is ideal for environments that handle sensitive or confidential data. Since these controls are more complex, they better meet compliance standards as well. As a result, Level 2 benchmarks require more technical expertise to implement, though they typically cause only limited business disruption.
STIG (Level 3): High-security baseline for federal and military use
The CIS Benchmarks’ third level, the Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG), is designed exclusively for environments that require the highest security, such as servers hosting government data or systems interacting with military networks. Defined by the US Department of Defense, these high standards are specifically developed to meet US government cybersecurity requirements. STIG requirements encompass all protections from Levels 1 and 2, so any STIG-certified system is inherently CIS-compliant.
Systems and Platforms Covered by CIS Benchmarks
The CIS Benchmarks specify protections for each technology they secure. Key categories include:
- Operating Systems: Windows, macOS
- Cloud Platforms: AWS, Azure, Google Cloud
- Network Devices: Routers, switches, firewalls
- Desktop Applications: Office 365, Zoom, browsers
- Mobile Devices: iOS and Android smartphones, tablets
- IoT Assets: Smart devices, GPS devices
By offering technology-specific controls, the CIS Benchmarks provide clear, practical protocols to reduce your attack surface and eliminate potential entry points.
How to Implement CIS Benchmarks, Step by Step
- Assess Systems: Survey your enterprise environments to determine what systems need hardening and which CIS Benchmarks to apply.
- Set Security Priorities: Determine which Benchmarks are most important for your system’s security and prioritize them as the first step in your configuration.
- Plan Implementation: Outline in detail the course of action your team will take in implementing the necessary Benchmarks, including step-by-step procedures, deadlines, and individual team members’ responsibilities.
- Train Staff: Instruct team members on the functions and importance of the applied CIS Benchmarks to best align staff with new security standards.
- Launch a Pilot: Test updated policies using a pilot program that uses only one or two priority Benchmarks, then incorporate additional Benchmarks in your prioritized order as each set of new controls is successfully implemented.
- Monitor & Improve: Continuously survey your systems to track the Benchmarks’ effectiveness and adjust the controls to address vulnerabilities and meet evolving security needs.
CIS Configuration Hardening: Why It Matters and How to Do It
As explained earlier, system hardening involves reducing vulnerabilities by establishing an effective configuration to secure the system while removing unnecessary features. This ongoing practice improves network efficiency, reduces the attack surface, and strengthens overall system protection.
While CIS Configurations provide a basic set of standards for securing systems, they serve as broad best practices rather than detailed recommendations for individual servers. Therefore, CIS Configurations can be customized by adjusting their controls to better fit your system’s unique requirements. In fact, the CIS Benchmarks even include suggestions for this process.
To assist you in strengthening configurations, the CIS Benchmarks provide specific guidelines for:
- Disabling insecure services (e.g., Telnet, SMBv1)
- Enforcing strong authentication and access policies
- Securing configurations across OS, network, and application layers
Strengthening asset protections with the CIS hardening checklist is essential, and technology-specific configurations should be applied before assets go into production to reduce the risk of attacks.
Netwrix solutions streamline hardening and compliance across identities, data, directories, and endpoints.
- Netwrix Change Tracker provides CIS-certified templates, drift detection, and automated rollback to secure configurations from the start.
- Netwrix Auditor continuously monitors configuration changes, validates alignment with CIS benchmarks, and maps results directly to compliance frameworks like PCI DSS, HIPAA, and NIST.
- Netwrix 1Secure DSPM helps discover and classify sensitive or shadow data, assess risks, and apply sensitivity labels to ensure CIS controls extend to critical data.
- Netwrix Privilege Secure (PAM) enforces just-in-time access, removes standing privileges, and tightly monitors admin sessions to align with CIS Control 4.
- Netwrix Directory Manager automates provisioning, deprovisioning, and group membership reviews, ensuring least privilege in line with CIS best practices.
- Netwrix Endpoint Policy Manager enforces secure GPOs across endpoints, while Netwrix Endpoint Protector adds device and data loss prevention controls.
Together, this identity-first approach ensures that CIS hardening is enforced consistently across systems, users, and data. - Netwrix Threat Manager and Threat Prevention (ITDR) detect abnormal behavior, privilege abuse, and risky configuration changes in real time, ensuring CIS hardening is continuously enforced.
Key Technical Practices from CIS Benchmarks
The CIS Benchmarks provide a comprehensive set of practices to protect your systems, especially when combined with relevant CIS Controls. Some of the most important cybersecurity practices these standards recommend include the following.
Controls 4.3 and 4.10: Session and device locking
To minimize the risk of unauthorized access to workstations, servers, and mobile devices when the user leaves, enable automatic session locking. For general-purpose operating systems, the inactivity timeout should be no longer than 15 minutes. For mobile devices, this timeout should not be more than two minutes.
Along with the automatic session locking recommended in Control 4.3, you should set up automatic lockout on portable end-user devices after a certain number of failed login attempts. Laptops should be locked after 20 failed tries, or fewer if your organization’s risk profile suggests it. For smartphones and tablets, the limit should be reduced to no more than 10 failed attempts.
Controls 4.4 and 4.5: Securing host-based and server firewalls
Firewalls are essential for protecting sensitive data. Installing a firewall on your servers defends against unauthorized access, blocks specific types of traffic, and ensures programs run only from trusted platforms and sources. There are different firewall options, such as virtual firewalls, operating system firewalls, and third-party firewalls.
You should deploy firewalls on end-user devices and your enterprise server. Install a host-based firewall or port-filtering tool on every device in your inventory, with a default-deny rule that blocks all traffic except for a specific list of services and ports with explicit permissions.
Firewalls should be regularly tested and updated to ensure they are well-configured and work effectively. You should check your firewalls at least once a year and whenever your environment or security needs change significantly.
Controls 4.7 and 4.8: Disabling unnecessary services and default accounts
Default accounts are easy targets for attackers because they can grant extensive rights in the environment. Therefore, it’s best practice for all companies to disable default accounts immediately after installing an asset and create new accounts with unique names that aren’t widely known. This makes it more difficult for attackers to guess the admin account name. Ensure you choose strong passwords, as recommended by organizations like NIST, and change them regularly — at least every 90 days.
Make sure that people with access to these privileged accounts understand they are only for specific situations; they should use their standard user accounts for everything else.
When configuring your enterprise assets and software, it’s important to disable or uninstall any unnecessary services. Examples include unused file-sharing services, unneeded web application modules, and extraneous service functions.
These services increase your attack surface and may introduce vulnerabilities that an attacker could exploit. Therefore, it’s best to keep everything as minimal and secure as possible, including only what is absolutely necessary.
Control 4.9: Implementing secure DNS configurations
Your assets should use enterprise-controlled or reputable, externally-accessible DNS servers. Since malware often spreads through DNS servers, make sure to promptly apply the latest security updates to help prevent infections. If hackers compromise a DNS server, they could use it to host malicious code.
Controls 4.11 and 4.12: Enabling remote wipe and workspace separation
If a user misplaces or loses their portable device, an unauthorized party could access the sensitive data it contains. To prevent such breaches and potential compliance penalties, you should set up remote wipe capabilities that allow you to erase sensitive data from portable devices remotely, without needing physical access. Be sure to regularly test this feature to verify it functions properly.
Additionally, you should set up a separate enterprise workspace on users’ mobile devices, specifically for contacts, network settings, emails, and webcams. This will help prevent attackers who access a user’s personal applications from reaching your corporate files or proprietary data.
Automating and Monitoring Benchmark Compliance
Once you have followed the CIS hardening checklist and implemented benchmarks for your organization, it’s crucial to automate the process of monitoring and managing them to ensure continuous enforcement. While it’s theoretically possible to manually enforce these controls according to CIS hardening standards, doing so is highly impractical because the vast scope of configurations to maintain will burden IT teams with excessive responsibilities, increasing the risk of manual errors, new misconfigurations, and burnout.
For effective and reliable enforcement, it’s best to use industry-standard tools to automate the process, such as:
- Netwrix Change Tracker: Detects opportunities to enhance system security; offers real-time drift monitoring
- Netwrix Auditor: Automates the auditing process with centralized data collection and report generation; alerts teams in real time about critical changes to system controls.
Automating enforcement is essential to prevent “configuration decay,” where a baseline system setup gradually becomes less secure as small changes add up. Manual configuration monitoring often leads to human errors, making it harder to spot vulnerabilities. With automated enforcement, changes are detected instantly and reliably, so you always know your system’s baseline setup and any modifications.
CIS Benchmarks and Regulatory Compliance
As the CIS Benchmarks are an industry standard in data protection, they provide an excellent way to help your organization achieve compliance with any relevant regulations. In fact, the Benchmarks contain strong enough recommendations that they can easily be adapted to meet any major legal requirements.
IT teams can easily map CIS Benchmarks to support:
- NIST Cybersecurity Framework
- PCI DSS
- HIPAA
- ISO 27001
However, initially aligning your configurations with compliance standards is only part of the process. As threats evolve and business challenges change, it’s essential to demonstrate ongoing compliance and prevent policy drift.
Netwrix solutions use CIS-certified reporting tools to demonstrate compliance with your system protections. By thoroughly scanning your network, tools in the Netwrix suite verify that system controls are configured according to CIS Control 4, assess data protections, identify unusual user permissions, and more. With this comprehensive monitoring, Netwrix easily supports audits and all CIS Controls related to reporting compliance.
Common Pitfalls in Benchmark Implementation
When implementing CIS Benchmarks and Controls, avoid hardening your system excessively – a trend called “over-hardening” – by applying more protections than necessary. While overprotection is generally better than underprotection, over-hardening your system can cause functionality problems, slow down the network, cause configuration errors, and introduce other issues that disrupt business operations.
It’s also essential to continuously monitor your systems to uphold enforcement. Effective system configurations cannot reliably work on a “set it and forget it” basis; business goals and challenges will inevitably evolve, and if IT staff adjust system settings to address these changes, you need insight into those adjustments to sustain your security posture. Without ongoing enforcement, configuration drift can easily occur, leading to unexpected (and often unseen) vulnerabilities. Likewise, any residual configuration changes should be thoroughly documented in a centralized database to keep a record of policy updates.
When safeguarding various assets, carefully review the relevant CIS Benchmarks to ensure each one receives appropriate protection. Every asset must be configured based on its specific characteristics, as protections are not interchangeable across different technologies.
How Netwrix Supports CIS Benchmark Success
Netwrix offers a comprehensive suite of solutions to help organizations implement and sustain CIS Benchmarks and Controls. By combining configuration monitoring, identity governance, and data protection, Netwrix ensures CIS hardening is consistently enforced across systems, users, and sensitive information.
- Netwrix Change Tracker – Provides CIS-certified templates, real-time drift detection, and automated rollback to secure configurations from the start and prevent configuration decay.
- Netwrix Auditor – Delivers visibility into all system and directory changes, logs activity for audit readiness, and provides predefined compliance reports that align with CIS and frameworks like HIPAA, PCI DSS, and ISO 27001.
- Netwrix 1Secure DSPM – Discovers and classifies sensitive and shadow data, applies sensitivity labels, and assesses risks to ensure hardening extends to data protection, not just system configurations.
- Netwrix Privilege Secure (PAM) – Eliminates standing privileges, enforces just-in-time access, and monitors privileged sessions in real time to align with CIS Control 4 requirements for secure configuration and privilege management.
- Netwrix Directory Manager – Automates provisioning, deprovisioning, and group membership reviews, ensuring least privilege and clean directories that comply with CIS recommendations.
- Netwrix Identity Manager – Governs user access with attestation, workflows, and role-based models, helping enforce CIS Control 5 for account and identity management.
- Netwrix Endpoint Policy Manager – Strengthens endpoint security by consolidating Group Policy, validating baselines, and enforcing endpoint hardening policies.
- Netwrix Endpoint Protector – Adds advanced device control and data loss prevention (DLP) to stop unauthorized transfers of sensitive data from endpoints, a critical component of CIS hardening.
- Netwrix Threat Manager and Threat Prevention (ITDR) – Detect abnormal behavior, privilege abuse, and risky configuration changes in real time, ensuring CIS controls remain effective against evolving threats.
This coordinated, identity-first approach ensures CIS benchmarks are not only implemented but also maintained over time. With Netwrix, organizations can confidently enforce secure baselines, prevent drift, govern privileged access, and protect critical data, building a resilient compliance and security posture.
Final Thoughts
The CIS Benchmarks serve as a comprehensive set of best practices for securing all areas of an organization’s digital assets and are a key element of strong cybersecurity hygiene.
Properly implementing the CIS Benchmarks is a proven way to enhance your organization’s compliance and lower the risk of a breach. By assessing your system’s controls against these standards, IT teams can more easily identify vulnerabilities, develop stronger protections, and better align with both industry standards and regulatory requirements. Combining the Benchmarks with the related CIS Controls further supports these efforts, providing detailed best practices for safeguarding your critical assets against specific threats.
Netwrix offers a complete range of solutions to help organizations secure their assets in line with CIS Benchmarks and Controls. With capabilities that include CIS-certified configuration hardening, continuous monitoring, privileged access enforcement, identity governance, sensitive data protection, and endpoint security, Netwrix ensures CIS standards are consistently applied across systems, users, and data. Automated reporting mapped to major compliance frameworks makes audits faster and easier, while real-time alerts and ITDR capabilities help sustain compliance and prevent breaches. With Netwrix, organizations can harden systems, protect critical data, and continuously prove compliance with confidence.
FAQs
What are CIS Benchmarks used for?
The CIS Benchmarks provide a set of specific guidelines to enhance security for particular technologies. These controls are categorized to cover components such as cloud services, operating systems, desktop applications, and network devices, among others. By following these cybersecurity protocols, IT professionals can better understand what effective system setups look like and implement these protections to strengthen enterprise systems against cyberattacks.
Is CIS Control 4 the same as a CIS Benchmark?
All CIS Controls, including Control 4, are related to CIS Benchmarks, but they are also distinct. While the CIS Controls provide guidance on how to secure specific parts of your server – for example, CIS Control 4 details how to securely configure enterprise assets and software, and CIS Control 5 covers secure account management – the CIS Benchmarks give recommendations on how to apply these protections to particular technologies. Generally, CIS Controls outline broad protection strategies, while CIS Benchmarks give targeted advice for individual components of your enterprise servers.
How often should I review my CIS configuration?
Regularly review and update your CIS configurations, whether monthly or even weekly, to monitor for configuration drift and address emerging vulnerabilities. Ongoing awareness of your system’s controls is essential for maintaining their effectiveness, and it’s always safer to check them more often than less.
Can I automate CIS Benchmark enforcement?
Yes, enforcing the CIS Benchmarks can be almost fully automated. CIS provides proprietary tools like CIS-CAT Pro and SCAP Tools for this purpose, which can be integrated with Netwrix tools designed to support CIS hardening standards for more effective enforcement.
What is the difference between Level 1 and Level 2 CIS Security Benchmarks?
Level 1 CIS Benchmarks cover the most basic cybersecurity best practices and represent essential protections for any system. Level 2, on the other hand, details more advanced protections designed to secure environments that contain sensitive data. Both protection levels can be applied to different parts of your server depending on the security needs of each environment.
Which Netwrix tools help with CIS Benchmark implementation?
Netwrix facilitates CIS Benchmark implementation with a broad set of solutions:
- Netwrix Change Tracker for CIS-certified templates, drift detection, and rollback.
- Netwrix Auditor for change visibility, reporting, and audit readiness.
- Netwrix 1Secure DSPM to discover and classify sensitive data and apply sensitivity labels.
- Netwrix Privilege Secure (PAM) to enforce just-in-time privileged access and remove standing admin rights.
- Netwrix Directory Manager to automate provisioning, deprovisioning, and group membership reviews.
- Netwrix Identity Manager to govern user access with attestation, workflows, and role-based controls.
- Netwrix Endpoint Policy Manager to enforce secure GPOs and baseline configurations.
- Netwrix Endpoint Protector to provide advanced DLP and device controls at the endpoint.
- Netwrix Threat Manager and Threat Prevention (ITDR) to detect abnormal behavior, privilege abuse, and risky configuration changes in real time, ensuring continuous CIS control enforcement.
