Is ASD E8 ML2 a good baseline for critical infrastructure (The SOCI entities)?

The presentation will delve into emerging and evolving threat landscape and discuss about annual threat report for 2024.

Learn about 5 ISM cyber security principles and how E8 ML2 does not cater for all five principles. E8 ML2 is heavily focused on Protect and Respond principles and there is a significant gap for other three principles – Govern, Identify and Detect.

The presenters will be provided an insight about other key ISM controls that must be included on top of E8 ML2 for better coverage of the cyber domain. Learn about additional ISM controls to get the full coverage that I have termed as “hardened baseline” on top of E8 ML2.

Learn about the high-level requirements of SoNS (Enhanced cyber security obligations – ECSO) and how additional controls assist with covering ECSO.

Explore and discuss about the 3 cyber attacks (2 from Australia and 1 from US) that points at missing controls from E8 ML2. The hardened baseline would have provided the mitigations against cyber breaches. Having a E8 ML2 is a solid baseline, but business/organisation must consider “hardened baseline” approach. Hardened baseline is influenced from CIS Top 18 (but all the additional controls are based on the current versions of ISM).

Learn about cyber-kill chain and how ISM E8 controls will disrupt the phases of the kill chain. The knowledge of cyber kill chain assists in breaking down the attack scenarios and how E8 ML2 and hardened baseline will thwart the ill intent from the attackers.

Learn about protecting Living of the Land Binaries – LOLBins as the attackers are using native tools such as PS Exec, PowerShell and RDP for infiltrating the networks (The stats are provided from Annual threat Report from 2024). Controls from ISM will be discussed as well.