Cybersecurity teams face a common challenge: too many threats, too many vulnerabilities, and too few resources.
Every day, enterprises must decide where to focus limited time, budget, and staff. Which safeguards should be implemented first? Which investments will have the greatest impact? And how can teams prioritize actions that meaningfully reduce risk?
The CIS Community Defense Model (CDM) v3.0 helps answer those questions. By connecting real-world attack data to CIS Critical Security Controls® (CIS Controls®) Safeguards, CDM helps organizations identify the actions that provide the greatest security value against the threats they are most likely to face.
At its foundation is a simple principle: enterprises share more cybersecurity challenges than they realize. Whether defending a local government, school district, nonprofit, critical infrastructure organization, or global enterprise, security teams routinely confront many of the same attack techniques and vulnerabilities. If organizations face common threats, they can benefit from common defensive strategies.
That is the power of collective cyber defense.
Connecting Threat Intelligence to Action
The cybersecurity community generates enormous amounts of data, from threat intelligence reports and breach investigations to vulnerability disclosures.
The challenge isn’t access to information. The challenge is determining what to do with it.
CDM v3.0 bridges that gap by connecting real-world attack data directly to CIS Controls Safeguards. Built on industry threat intelligence, breach data, Verizon DBIR findings, VERIS data, and MITRE ATT&CK mappings, the model identifies which safeguards deliver the greatest defensive value against today’s most prevalent attack types.
The Community Defense Model connects attacker behavior and safeguards to provide prioritized protection against real-world threats.
The result is practical, evidence-based guidance that helps enterprises determine what to secure first and where cybersecurity investments can have the greatest impact.
Key Findings from CDM v3.0
CDM v3.0 validates the effectiveness of the CIS Controls while providing organizations with a data-driven approach to cybersecurity prioritization. Several findings stand out.
Essential Cyber Hygiene Provides Broad Protection
One of the clearest findings from CDM v3.0 is that essential cyber hygiene remains effective for reducing cyber risk.
Enterprises implementing CIS Controls Implementation Group 1 (IG1) Safeguards can achieve broad protection against the most prevalent attack categories analyzed in the model:
- 89% of System Intrusion techniques
- 86% of Social Engineering techniques
- 88% of Basic Web Application Attack techniques
- 84% of Privilege Misuse techniques
- 88% of Denial of Service (DoS) techniques
These results demonstrate that organizations do not need a highly mature cybersecurity program to achieve meaningful risk reduction. A focused set of prioritized safeguards can provide substantial protection against real-world attacks.
Secure Configuration Remains Critical
Among all safeguards analyzed, CIS Safeguard 4.1, Establish and Maintain a Secure Configuration Process, emerged as the most effective safeguard across all five attack categories.
This finding reinforces a longstanding cybersecurity principle: secure configurations remain foundational to cyber resilience. Enterprises that establish and maintain secure configurations significantly strengthen their ability to defend against a broad range of threats.
AI Is Changing Attack Velocity, Not Defensive Fundamentals
While artificial intelligence is helping attackers increase the speed, scale, and sophistication of cyber attacks, CDM v3.0 found that many AI-enabled threats still fall into familiar attack categories.
The core defensive practices remain largely unchanged. Foundational cybersecurity safeguards continue to provide effective protection against the techniques attackers use most frequently.
Introducing the CIS Controls Active Defense Lifecycle™
New in CDM v3.0, the CIS Controls Active Defense Lifecycle provides a defender-focused capability for understanding how safeguards disrupt attacks.
The lifecycle organizes attacker activity into five stages:
- Reconnaissance and Planning
- Beginning Intrusion
- Access Expansion
- Defensive Movement
- Final Stage
By mapping CIS Safeguards to each stage of attacker activity, enterprises can better understand where defenses prevent, interrupt, contain, or mitigate attacks before they achieve their objectives.
This approach helps enterprises identify defensive strengths, uncover potential gaps, and build more effective defense-in-depth strategies. It also provides a practical framework for planning, communicating, and improving cybersecurity programs over time.
Ready to Turn Threat Intelligence Into Action?
Download the CIS Community Defense Model (CDM) v3.0 to explore the safeguards that provide the greatest security value against today’s most prevalent cyber attacks.
Built on real-world attack data, industry threat intelligence, Verizon DBIR research, VERIS data, and MITRE ATT&CK mappings, CDM v3.0 provides a practical, evidence-based approach to cybersecurity prioritization. The findings reinforce the effectiveness of the CIS Controls and provide enterprises with a clear path toward stronger cyber resilience.
