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Glossary · Australian Compliance

Essential Eight

The Australian Cyber Security Centre's recommended baseline of eight mitigation strategies for protecting business systems against cyber threats.

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In detail

The Australian Signals Directorate's Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) publishes the Essential Eight. The eight mitigations are application control, patch applications, configure Microsoft Office macro settings, user application hardening, restrict administrative privileges, patch operating systems, multi-factor authentication, and regular backups. The Essential Eight rates each mitigation against a four level maturity model from zero (not implemented) to three (fully aligned). It is the de facto baseline for any Australian organisation that takes security seriously.

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