HyperScale Blog

Mapping organization's existing controls & defenses to MITRE ATT&CK

Written by Megan SHAW | Mar 13, 2023 5:26:48 AM

Mapping your organization's existing controls and defenses to MITRE ATT&CK can help you understand the effectiveness of your current security posture and identify gaps that need to be addressed. By aligning your defenses with the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) used by attackers, you can get a more complete picture of your organization's vulnerabilities and take steps to improve your defenses.


MITRE ATT&CK is a globally-accessible knowledge base of adversary tactics and techniques based on real-world observations. It provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the various stages of an attack and the TTPs used by attackers at each stage. This framework can help organizations identify their most critical assets and the threats they face, and then map their existing controls and defenses to the relevant TTPs.

To map your organization's existing controls and defenses to MITRE ATT&CK, you can follow these steps:

  • Identify your organization's critical assets: Start by identifying the assets that are most critical to your business, such as intellectual property, customer data, and financial information. This will help you focus your efforts on protecting the assets that matter most.
  • Assess the threats facing your organization: Next, assess the threats that your organization faces, including both external threats (such as cybercriminals) and internal threats (such as disgruntled employees). This will help you understand the specific TTPs that you need to defend against.
  • Map your existing controls and defenses to MITRE ATT&CK: Once you have identified your critical assets and the threats facing your organization, you can begin mapping your existing controls and defenses to the relevant TTPs in MITRE ATT&CK. This will help you understand which TTPs your organization is already protected against and which ones require additional defenses.
  • Identify gaps in your defenses: After mapping your existing controls and defenses to MITRE ATT&CK, you can use the framework to identify gaps in your defenses. These gaps may be due to a lack of specific controls or defenses, or they may be due to weaknesses in your existing defenses.
  • Take action to close the gaps in your defenses: Once you have identified the gaps in your defenses, you can take action to close them. This may involve implementing new controls and defenses, strengthening your existing defenses, or increasing your organization's overall resilience to attacks.

 

By mapping your organization's existing controls and defenses to MITRE ATT&CK, you can get a more complete picture of your organization's vulnerabilities and take steps to improve your defenses. This can help you protect your critical assets and reduce the likelihood of a successful attack.