The threat landscape has never been more demanding. Organizations experienced an average of 1,968 weekly cyberattacks in 2025 — a 70% increase since 2023 — and the average global breach cost reached $4.44 million that same year. In this environment, security frameworks provide the structured, repeatable approaches that transform reactive firefighting into proactive defense. Yet 95% of organizations face significant challenges implementing them (2024), often because they lack a complete picture of what frameworks exist and how they work together.
This guide introduces a five-category taxonomy spanning compliance, risk management, control catalogs, threat intelligence and detection, and architecture frameworks. Unlike guides that cover only compliance and governance, we give detection-focused frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK, MITRE D3FEND, the Pyramid of Pain, and the Cyber Kill Chain equal weight — because frameworks only matter if they translate into operational security outcomes.
Security frameworks are structured sets of guidelines, best practices, and standards that organizations use to identify, manage, and reduce cybersecurity risk while maintaining regulatory compliance and building resilience against cybersecurity threats. They provide a common language for security teams, executives, and auditors to assess posture, prioritize investments, and measure progress.
With 93% of respondents identifying cybersecurity as a top or major priority in 2025, frameworks have become essential blueprints for translating that priority into action.
Every security framework, regardless of its category, shares five foundational components.
Understanding these components answers one of the most common questions in the field: what are some of the primary purposes of security frameworks? They exist to provide structured risk management, establish a common language across teams, ensure audit readiness, and build stakeholder trust.
Security professionals frequently use the terms "framework," "standard," and "regulation" interchangeably — and the industry itself contributes to the confusion. Here is how to distinguish them.
In practice, the boundaries blur. ISO 27001 functions as both a standard and a framework. HIPAA is a regulation that contains a Security Rule structured like a framework. The important distinction is flexibility versus prescription — frameworks guide, standards specify, and regulations mandate.
Most guides classify security frameworks into three or four categories. SentinelOne uses three types (regulatory, voluntary, and industry-specific), while Secureframe identifies four (compliance, risk-based, control-based, and program). Neither includes threat intelligence and detection frameworks as a distinct category — a significant gap given how central they have become to modern security operations.
The five-category taxonomy below provides a more complete picture of the security framework landscape.
Table: Five-category security framework taxonomy
Compliance frameworks help organizations demonstrate adherence to regulatory or industry requirements. SOC 2 evaluates service organizations against five Trust Service Criteria. ISO 27001:2022 provides a certifiable information security management system. PCI DSS protects cardholder data. HIPAA secures protected health information. GDPR compliance governs personal data in the EU. FedRAMP authorizes cloud services for U.S. federal agencies.
These frameworks answer the question: Can we prove we meet the rules?
Risk frameworks help organizations understand, prioritize, and communicate cybersecurity risk. NIST CSF 2.0 provides outcome-based governance across six functions. COBIT aligns IT governance with business objectives. FAIR (Factor Analysis of Information Risk) quantifies risk in financial terms, enabling conversations with boards and finance teams.
These frameworks answer the question: Where should we invest to reduce the most risk?
Control catalogs offer prioritized lists of specific safeguards. CIS Controls v8.1 organizes 18 controls into three Implementation Groups (IG1 through IG3) based on organizational maturity. NIST SP 800-53 provides the most comprehensive control catalog available, with over 1,000 controls across 20 families.
These frameworks answer the question: What specific actions should we take?
This is the category most competitors overlook — and it is arguably the most operationally relevant for security teams. MITRE ATT&CK maps real-world adversary tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs). MITRE D3FEND maps defensive countermeasures. The Pyramid of Pain prioritizes detection by attacker evasion difficulty. The Cyber Kill Chain models attack progression through seven phases. The Diamond Model analyzes intrusions through four vertices (adversary, capability, infrastructure, victim).
These frameworks answer the question: How do attackers operate, and how do we detect them?
Architecture frameworks define principles for building secure systems from the ground up. Zero Trust Architecture (NIST SP 800-207) requires strict verification for every user and device regardless of network location. SABSA (Sherwood Applied Business Security Architecture) takes a business-driven approach to security architecture.
These frameworks answer the question: How do we design systems that are secure by default?
The following profiles cover 15 frameworks across all five taxonomy categories, providing the scope, structure, and current version of each.
The NIST CSF is the most widely adopted cybersecurity framework globally. Ranked the most valuable framework for the second consecutive year (2024--2025), it has been adopted by more than half of Fortune 500 companies (2024).
CSF 2.0, released in February 2024, introduced six core functions — Govern, Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover — up from five in CSF 1.1. The addition of "Govern" reflects the growing recognition that cybersecurity is a board-level governance concern, not just a technical one. December 2025 alignment updates further refined its guidance.
NIST CSF is voluntary, sector-agnostic, and designed to be customized. It works for organizations of any size, from small businesses to critical infrastructure operators.
ISO 27001 is the international standard for information security management systems (ISMS). The 2022 revision reorganized controls from 114 to 93, grouped into four themes: organizational, people, physical, and technological. The ISO 27001:2013 version was officially withdrawn in October 2025, so all certifications now reference the 2022 edition.
Adoption is accelerating: 81% of organizations report current or planned ISO 27001 certification, up from 67% in 2024. ISO 27001 is especially relevant for organizations with international operations or customers requiring third-party certification.
The Center for Internet Security (CIS) publishes 18 prioritized controls organized into three Implementation Groups: IG1 (essential cyber hygiene, 56 safeguards), IG2 (additional safeguards for mid-size organizations), and IG3 (comprehensive coverage for large enterprises). Version 8.1, released June 2024, added a "Governance" security function to align with NIST CSF 2.0.
CIS Controls are the recommended starting point for organizations implementing their first framework, because IG1 provides maximum risk reduction with minimal resource requirements.
SOC 2 is an attestation framework developed by the AICPA that evaluates service organizations against five Trust Service Criteria: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. Unlike ISO 27001, SOC 2 does not result in a "certification" but rather an auditor's report (Type I for design, Type II for operating effectiveness over time). It ranks among the top three frameworks by importance alongside ISO 27001 and SOC 1 (2025).
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard protects cardholder data. PCI DSS 4.0 made 47 new requirements mandatory as of March 31, 2025, shifting the standard toward continuous compliance rather than point-in-time assessments. Non-compliance carries penalties of $5,000 to $100,000 per month (2025), making it one of the most financially consequential frameworks for organizations handling payment data.
Is HIPAA a security framework? HIPAA is primarily a federal regulation — the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. However, its Security Rule contains a framework-like structure of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards that organizations use to protect electronic protected health information (ePHI). For healthcare cybersecurity teams, the HIPAA Security Rule effectively functions as their foundational security framework.
MITRE ATT&CK is a globally accessible knowledge base of adversary TTPs based on real-world observations. Version 18 (October 2025) encompasses 14 tactics, 216 techniques, and 475 sub-techniques. Notably, v18 replaced "Detections" with "Detection Strategies," providing more actionable guidance for defenders.
Version 19 is expected in April 2026 and will deprecate the Defense Evasion tactic in favor of more granular technique categorization.
ATT&CK is the de facto standard for mapping detection coverage, conducting threat-informed defense assessments, and communicating about adversary behavior across the industry.
MITRE D3FEND is a knowledge graph of defensive countermeasures organized into seven categories: Model, Harden, Detect, Isolate, Deceive, Evict, and Restore. Version 1.3.0 (December 2025) includes 267 defensive techniques and added an OT (operational technology) extension.
D3FEND complements ATT&CK by mapping the defensive side of the equation — for every attacker technique, what countermeasures can organizations deploy? Vectra AI holds 12 references in D3FEND, more than any other vendor.
The Cyber Kill Chain, developed by Lockheed Martin, models attack progression through seven phases: Reconnaissance, Weaponization, Delivery, Exploitation, Installation, Command and Control, and Actions on Objectives. While MITRE ATT&CK provides granular technique-level mapping, the Cyber Kill Chain offers a strategic view of how attacks flow — making it valuable for communicating attack narratives to non-technical stakeholders.
Most competitors omit the Cyber Kill Chain entirely, despite its widespread use in incident response planning and SOC operations.
The Pyramid of Pain, created by David Bianco, defines six levels of detection difficulty: hash values (trivial for attackers to change), IP addresses, domain names, network/host artifacts, tools, and TTPs (most difficult to change). The model teaches defenders to focus detection investments on the top of the pyramid — TTPs — because they cause the most operational disruption to adversaries.
In December 2024, the MITRE Center for Threat-Informed Defense published operational guidance for "summiting the pyramid," providing practical methods for implementing TTP-based detections.
Zero Trust is an architecture model built on seven core tenets, the most fundamental being: never trust, always verify. NIST SP 800-207 provides the authoritative definition. The NSA released Zero Trust Implementation Guidelines in January 2026, offering a phased approach for federal agencies and defense organizations.
Zero Trust is not a product — it is a design philosophy that requires continuous verification of identity, device health, and context before granting access to any resource.
COBIT (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technologies) aligns IT governance with business objectives, making it valuable for organizations where cybersecurity must integrate with broader enterprise governance. FAIR (Factor Analysis of Information Risk) is a quantitative risk analysis framework that measures information risk in financial terms — essential for presenting cybersecurity investments to boards and CFOs.
Table: Security framework comparison by type, scope, certification requirement, and industry fit
Organizations rarely implement a single framework in isolation. Fifty-two percent maintain compliance with more than one framework (2025), and companies with over $100 million in revenue average 3.2 frameworks (2025).
The good news is that frameworks overlap significantly. Organizations implementing ISO 27001 have already met approximately 83% of NIST CSF requirements — and NIST CSF covers about 61% of ISO 27001 controls. CIS Controls maps directly to both NIST CSF functions and ISO 27001 controls, serving as a practical implementation layer for either governance framework.
Detection frameworks add a different dimension entirely. MITRE ATT&CK and D3FEND do not replace compliance frameworks — they validate whether the controls specified by NIST, ISO, and CIS actually work against real adversary behaviors. An organization can be fully compliant with ISO 27001 and still lack detection coverage for critical ATT&CK techniques.
Rather than adopting everything at once, organizations should layer frameworks based on maturity.
This layered approach means each framework investment builds on the last, rather than creating parallel compliance workstreams.
The framework landscape is evolving rapidly. AI governance, EU regulatory enforcement, and cloud-specific requirements represent the fastest-growing areas.
ISO 42001 (published December 2023) is the first international standard for AI management systems. Organizations with existing ISO 27001 certification can achieve ISO 42001 compliance 30--40% faster due to shared management system requirements (2025).
The NIST AI security Cybersecurity Profile (IR 8596) released a preliminary draft in December 2025, with an initial public draft expected later in 2026. Meanwhile, MITRE ATLAS catalogs adversarial threats to AI/ML systems, complementing ATT&CK in the AI domain.
The urgency is real: 64% of organizations now assess AI tool security before deployment, up from 37% in 2025 (WEF 2026). And 87% identified AI-related vulnerabilities as the fastest-growing cyber risk of 2025 (WEF 2026). The EU AI Act high-risk deadlines arrive in August 2026, making AI governance frameworks operationally urgent for any organization deploying AI in the EU.
The NIS2 Directive expands cybersecurity requirements across 18 critical sectors in the EU. As of January 2026, 16 of 27 EU member states have transposed NIS2 into national law. Penalties reach up to 10 million EUR or 2% of global turnover. January 2026 amendments proposed further harmonization and expanded scope.
The Digital Operational Resilience Act has been enforced since January 2025, covering 20 types of financial entities. DORA requires ICT risk management frameworks, incident reporting, digital operational resilience testing, and third-party risk management. Supervisory reviews begin in 2026, with fines up to 2% of global annual turnover.
The Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification 2.0 entered Phase 1 in November 2025. Phase 2 begins November 10, 2026, requiring third-party assessments for Level 2 certification. More than 220,000 contractors are affected, making CMMC one of the most consequential framework rollouts for the defense industrial base.
As organizations accelerate cloud migration, cloud-specific frameworks are gaining importance. The CSA Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM) provides cloud-native security controls. NIST SP 800-144 addresses public cloud security. Cloud-specific CIS Benchmarks offer hardening guidance for AWS, Azure, and GCP. These frameworks complement rather than replace general-purpose frameworks, adding cloud security specificity to broader governance models. IoT security frameworks are similarly maturing for operational technology environments.
Table: 2025--2026 regulatory framework enforcement timeline
Choosing the right framework depends on three factors: your industry's regulatory requirements, your organization's maturity level, and your primary security objectives. The stakes are high — 47% of organizations said lack of compliance certification delayed sales cycles and 38% lost a deal due to insufficient security assurance (2025).
Table: Framework selection guide by industry, size, and security objective
Implementing a cybersecurity framework requires a structured approach. Adapted from the NIST seven-step process, here is a practical sequence.
Ninety-five percent of organizations face significant challenges implementing security frameworks (2024). The research identifies three primary barriers.
Table: Most common framework implementation challenges and mitigation strategies
More than half of organizations have one or fewer full-time security staff (2025), and teams spend approximately eight hours per week on compliance tasks alone. Automated compliance monitoring cuts regulatory penalties by 40% (2025), making SOC automation a critical enabler for resource-constrained teams.
When frameworks are not implemented — or are implemented with gaps — the consequences are measurable.
Prosper Marketplace (2025). Inadequate access controls led to the exposure of 17.6 million personal records. The breach mapped directly to failures in NIST CSF's "Protect" function and CIS Control 6 (Access Control Management). Proper implementation of either framework's access control requirements would have significantly reduced the attack surface.
UK retail ransomware campaign (2025). The Scattered Spider threat group exploited supply chain risk management gaps across major UK retailers including M&S, Co-op, and Harrods. The attack exposed weaknesses in third-party risk management — a core requirement of NIST CSF's "Govern" function and a primary focus of DORA.
Illuminate Education (2025). An identity lifecycle management failure exposed millions of student records. The data breach traced to CIS Control 5 (Account Management) gaps, where orphaned accounts and excessive permissions remained after employee transitions. This case illustrates why vulnerability management and identity governance must be operationalized, not just documented.
Frameworks only deliver value when you measure their impact. Four key metrics provide visibility into framework effectiveness.
The security framework landscape is converging around three themes: automation, AI-driven compliance, and the fusion of detection and compliance frameworks.
Global cybersecurity spending is projected to reach $244 billion in 2026, and Gartner predicts that preemptive security solutions will account for half of all security spending by 2030. This shift reflects a broader industry movement from reactive, compliance-driven security toward proactive, signal-driven defense.
Detection frameworks like MITRE ATT&CK and D3FEND are increasingly being used alongside compliance frameworks to validate operational effectiveness. A compliance checklist confirms that controls exist. An ATT&CK coverage assessment confirms that those controls actually detect real adversary behaviors. Organizations are bridging this gap by mapping their threat detection capabilities to ATT&CK techniques and their defensive technologies to D3FEND countermeasures.
AI-driven SOC operations are accelerating this convergence. Automated triage, behavioral threat detection, and threat hunting capabilities can now validate framework controls in real time — turning static compliance artifacts into dynamic, measurable outcomes.
Vectra AI approaches security frameworks through the lens of detection and response rather than compliance alone. With 12 references in MITRE D3FEND — more than any other vendor — and deep MITRE ATT&CK technique mapping, Vectra AI operationalizes frameworks by connecting detection coverage to framework controls.
The company's Attack Signal Intelligence applies behavioral detection principles rooted in frameworks like the Pyramid of Pain and Cyber Kill Chain. Rather than chasing easily changed indicators like hash values and IP addresses, Attack Signal Intelligence focuses on the TTPs at the top of the pyramid — the attacker behaviors that are hardest to evade.
This detection-first approach ensures frameworks translate into measurable security outcomes: reduced mean time to detect, fewer blind spots across hybrid environments, and signal clarity that cuts through alert noise. It is the difference between proving you have controls and proving those controls actually stop attacks. Learn more about how network detection and response operationalizes framework controls.
Security frameworks are not paperwork exercises — they are the structural foundation for defending organizations against a threat landscape that grows more sophisticated every quarter. The five-category taxonomy presented here — spanning compliance, risk management, control catalogs, threat intelligence and detection, and architecture — provides a complete map of the framework landscape that goes beyond what most guides offer.
The most effective security programs layer frameworks by maturity, starting with CIS Controls for immediate risk reduction, building toward NIST CSF governance, and validating operational effectiveness through MITRE ATT&CK and D3FEND mapping. They treat detection-centric frameworks as first-class citizens alongside compliance requirements, because proving you have controls is meaningless if those controls cannot detect real attackers.
As AI governance, EU regulatory enforcement, and cloud-specific frameworks continue to evolve, the organizations that thrive will be those that operationalize their frameworks — turning static policies into dynamic, measurable security outcomes.
The 5 Cs of cybersecurity — Change, Compliance, Cost, Continuity, and Coverage — represent a management-oriented lens for evaluating security programs. Change addresses how organizations adapt to evolving threats. Compliance ensures regulatory and framework requirements are met. Cost balances security investment against risk reduction. Continuity focuses on maintaining operations during and after incidents. Coverage evaluates whether security controls protect all assets, identities, and attack surfaces. While not a formal framework, the 5 Cs provide a useful mental model for board-level security conversations. Different industry sources define slightly different 5 C models, so context matters.
NIST CSF 2.0 itself does not define maturity levels. However, NIST provides four implementation tiers that describe an organization's approach to managing cybersecurity risk. Tier 1 (Partial) indicates ad hoc, reactive risk management. Tier 2 (Risk Informed) means risk management practices are approved by leadership but may not be organization-wide. Tier 3 (Repeatable) reflects formally established policies that are regularly updated. Tier 4 (Adaptive) describes organizations that continuously improve based on lessons learned and predictive indicators. These tiers are not prescriptive maturity levels — NIST explicitly states they are not intended as a scoring mechanism. Instead, they help organizations understand their current posture and set improvement targets.
HIPAA is a federal regulation, not a framework in the traditional sense. However, the HIPAA Security Rule (45 CFR Part 160 and Part 164, Subparts A and C) contains a framework-like structure of administrative, physical, and technical safeguards that organizations use to protect electronic protected health information (ePHI). Administrative safeguards cover risk assessments, workforce training, and contingency planning. Physical safeguards address facility access and workstation security. Technical safeguards include access controls, audit controls, and transmission security. In practice, many healthcare organizations treat the HIPAA Security Rule as their primary security framework, supplementing it with NIST CSF for broader governance.
SOC 2 is an attestation framework developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) that evaluates a service organization's controls across five Trust Service Criteria: security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. A SOC 2 Type I report evaluates control design at a point in time, while a Type II report evaluates operating effectiveness over a period (typically six to 12 months). SOC 2 does not result in a formal "certification" but rather an independent auditor's opinion. It has become a near-universal requirement for SaaS companies, cloud providers, and any organization that processes customer data on behalf of other businesses.
This is a common question, but it contains an outdated assumption. NIST CSF 1.1 had five functions: Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover. NIST CSF 2.0, released in February 2024, now has six functions with the addition of Govern. The Govern function establishes cybersecurity risk management strategy, expectations, and policy at the organizational level. It recognizes that cybersecurity governance is a leadership responsibility, not just a technical one. The six functions work together as a continuous cycle: Govern sets strategy, Identify inventories assets and risks, Protect implements safeguards, Detect discovers threats, Respond contains incidents, and Recover restores operations.
NIST CSF is a voluntary, outcome-based framework focused on cybersecurity risk management. It provides flexible guidance that organizations can customize to their context without requiring external certification. ISO 27001 is a certifiable international standard with prescriptive control requirements and mandatory management system processes. The key overlap is significant: organizations implementing ISO 27001 meet approximately 83% of NIST CSF requirements. The practical distinction lies in their primary use cases. NIST CSF is often chosen for internal governance, regulatory alignment (especially in the U.S.), and risk communication. ISO 27001 is preferred when customers, partners, or regulators require independent third-party certification — particularly common in international markets.
At minimum, organizations should conduct a formal framework review annually. However, several triggers should prompt an immediate review: major security incidents, significant infrastructure changes (cloud migration, M&A activity), new regulatory requirements, or framework version updates. PCI DSS 4.0's shift toward continuous compliance reflects the broader industry trend — point-in-time assessments are giving way to ongoing monitoring and validation. Best practice is to integrate framework review into regular governance cycles, with automated compliance monitoring providing continuous visibility between formal review periods. Detection framework mapping (such as ATT&CK coverage assessments) should be reviewed quarterly or after any significant change to the threat landscape or detection stack.