Learn: where a rule comes from
The ladder gives you the four words — standard, baseline, control, setting. This page answers the next question: who wrote the rulebook, and under whose authority. Every control on this site arrived by the same route. A law obliges somebody to act; a policy says what acting looks like; a framework structures the work; a catalogue holds the controls; a baseline picks the ones your kind of system gets; a setting is how one of them is enforced on a real device; and a check proves it was. Each step below names its publishers, with the address their own words live at and what it takes to read them.
The chain, in one picture
- Law and contract what obliges anyone to do this at all
- Policy what the government or agency directs, under that law
- Framework how the work is structured: categorise, select, assess, authorise
- Control catalogue the controls themselves, written once for everyone
- Baseline the controls chosen for one kind of system
- Configuration setting how a control is enforced on a real device
- Check and evidence how conformance is expressed, measured and proved
Nothing is obliged to use the whole chain. A private business usually joins at the framework or the setting and has no policy rung at all; a DoD system has every rung and a second committee besides. That is what "normalised" means in practice, and the three traces below walk it.
Who publishes what, and for whom
The rows are the steps of the chain; the columns are who the publisher writes for. Reading across one row answers the question this page exists for: the same job, as NIST, DISA, NASA, CIS and the ACSC each answer it. Showing Private business alone.
| Step | Private businessadopted by contract or by choice, never by FISMA |
|---|---|
| Law and contractwhat obliges anyone to do this at all | FAR 52.204-21DFARS 252.204-7012 |
| Policywhat the government or agency directs, under that law | — |
| Frameworkhow the work is structured: categorise, select, assess, authorise | NIST CSF 2.0CMMCCIS Critical Security ControlsISO/IEC 27001 and 27002 |
| Control cataloguethe controls themselves, written once for everyone | NIST SP 800-171 |
| Baselinethe controls chosen for one kind of system | FedRAMP baselinesmacOS Security Compliance Project |
| Configuration settinghow a control is enforced on a real device | DISA STIGsMicrosoft security baselinesCIS BenchmarksNSA Cybersecurity Information Sheets |
| Check and evidencehow conformance is expressed, measured and proved | OSCALSCAP and the National Checklist ProgramCSET (CISA's assessment tool) |
The same control, traced three ways
One control — a device that locks itself after a period of inactivity — carried down three different ladders. The control barely changes. Everything above and below it does.
A private business
Nothing here is obliged by FISMA. It arrives by contract, by market, or by choice.
-
Law and contract DFARS 252.204-7012
A defense contract flows SP 800-171 down — or no contract does, and everything below is voluntary.
-
Policy nobody
There is no rung here. No OMB circular reaches a private company; its own policy is the only policy.
-
Framework NIST CSF 2.0
CSF 2.0 organises the work by function, or CIS Controls prioritises it, or ISO 27001 certifies it — whichever the customer asks for.
-
Control catalogue NIST SP 800-171
3.1.10: use session lock with pattern-hiding displays to prevent access after a period of inactivity.
-
Baseline CIS Benchmarks
The CIS Benchmark for the platform, Level 1 for a workstation, Level 2 where the data warrants it.
-
Configuration setting Microsoft security baselines
The vendor's own baseline sets the machine inactivity limit, imported as a GPO or an Intune policy.
-
Check and evidence CMMC
A CMMC assessment, a customer's questionnaire, or an ISO audit — somebody outside the company asks for the evidence.
How they are normalised
Four mechanisms do nearly all the work of turning one body's rules into another's, and each one is public.
- Control Correlation Identifiers — DISA breaks each NIST SP 800-53 control statement into single testable assertions and numbers them. A STIG rule cites the CCI, the CCI names the control, and a pile of findings about registry values becomes an answer about controls. This is the one joint that makes a DoD scan report legible to a civilian assessor.
- OSCAL — a catalogue, a profile and a baseline as data rather than prose. A baseline becomes a document that says "this catalogue, these controls, these parameters", which a program resolves. It is how this instance reads 800-53 and 800-171 at all.
- SCAP and the National Checklist Program — XCCDF for the checklist, OVAL for the test, and the National Checklist Program as the public shelf. The same STIG exists twice: as prose for a person and as content for a scanner.
- macOS Security Compliance Project — the worked example. Each macOS rule carries its references to 800-53, 800-171, the STIG, CIS and CMMC at once, and the build emits whichever baseline you asked for. One rule, many citations: that is normalisation done at the source instead of afterwards.
And the two paths into private business
Nothing on this page obliges a company by itself. Federal rules reach private business two ways. By contract: DFARS 252.204-7012 flows NIST SP 800-171 down to every defense supplier, and CMMC audits it; FAR 52.204-21 sets a fifteen-requirement floor in almost every other federal contract. By market: FedRAMP baselines is met once and sold to every agency. Everything else — NIST CSF 2.0, CIS Critical Security Controls, ISO/IEC 27001 and 27002 — is adopted because a customer asked or because it is a good idea, and a company can leave at any time. Which of those applies to you is the first thing to settle, because it decides whether the rest of this page is a requirement or a reading list.
What this site does with all of it
One pipeline, the same for every publisher: fetch, keep the exact bytes, normalise into requirements or settings, diff field by field against the previous version, and record the publisher's own stated reason where there is one. So the change register can show a control before and after; Controls searches every tracked catalogue at once; and Baselines builds the strictest published set for a platform and lets you trim it. A machine-generated summary is always labelled as one, and never replaces the publisher's words.
Every body, with its source
16 of 35 publishers, writing for Private business · show all
US federal acquisition (FAR Council)
Fifteen basic safeguarding requirements written into almost every federal contract that touches federal contract information.
The smallest legal floor a private company can be held to by a US federal contract — and the first place a business discovers that a 'voluntary' framework is not voluntary for them.
- Derives from
- nothing on this page — it is a root
- Feeds into
- nothing here derives from it yet
- Read it at
- FAR 52.204-21 public
US Department of Defense (DFARS)
The defense contract clause that flows NIST SP 800-171 down to any contractor holding controlled unclassified information, with incident reporting attached.
This clause is why a machine shop in Ohio has to care about a NIST publication. It is the normalisation path from federal rules to private business.
- Derives from
- nothing on this page — it is a root
- Feeds into
- CMMC, NIST SP 800-171
- Read it at
- DFARS 252.204-7012 public
NIST
The Cybersecurity Framework: six functions — govern, identify, protect, detect, respond, recover — with no control text of its own, and informative references out to the catalogues that have it.
The usual entry point for a private business, because it obliges nothing and organises everything. It is a map, not a rulebook.
- Derives from
- nothing on this page — it is a root
- Feeds into
- CSET (CISA's assessment tool)
- Read it at
- The framework public
- CSF 2.0 (CSWP 29) public
- Mapped to others
US Department of Defense CIO
Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification: the assessment and certification programme that turns SP 800-171 from a promise in a contract into an audited level.
The answer to 'who checks?' in private business. Level 2 is the SP 800-171 requirement set, assessed by a third party rather than self-attested.
- Derives from
- DFARS 252.204-7012, NIST SP 800-171 (and further up: NIST SP 800-53B, NIST SP 800-53, FIPS 199 and FIPS 200, FISMA 2014)
- Feeds into
- nothing here derives from it yet
- Read it at
- CMMC at DoD CIO public
Center for Internet Security
Eighteen controls in three implementation groups, ordered by what stops the most attacks for the least work.
The private-sector counterpart to a federal catalogue: prioritised rather than complete, and written to be started on a Monday.
- Derives from
- nothing on this page — it is a root
- Feeds into
- CIS Benchmarks, CSET (CISA's assessment tool)
- Read it at
- CIS Controls free account
- Mapped to others
- Mappings to 800-53, CSF, ISO 27001 free account
ISO and IEC
27001 is the certifiable management system; 27002 is its control guidance. The pair is what most of the world outside US government means by 'the standard'.
The one on this page a company is certified against rather than assessed under, and the one a customer in Europe or Asia is most likely to ask for.
- Derives from
- nothing on this page — it is a root
- Feeds into
- nothing here derives from it yet
- Read it at
- ISO/IEC 27001 your own licence ISO sells its standards; the abstract is public
- Mapped to others
NIST
The requirements for protecting controlled unclassified information in systems that are not federal — tailored out of the moderate baseline, with the federal-only parts removed.
This is the normalisation, written down: SP 800-53 for government, SP 800-171 for everyone the government buys from. CMMC Level 2 is this set.
- Derives from
- NIST SP 800-53B, DFARS 252.204-7012 (and further up: NIST SP 800-53, FIPS 199 and FIPS 200, FISMA 2014)
- Feeds into
- CMMC, macOS Security Compliance Project
- Read it at
- SP 800-171 Rev. 3 public
- SP 800-171A (assessment) public
- On this instance
- OSCAL 1.1.0 · 2 versions held · every version and what changed loaded Fri 23 Oct
FedRAMP (GSA)
The low, moderate and high baselines a cloud service must meet to be authorised for federal use, as 800-53 controls plus FedRAMP's own parameters.
The other normalisation path into private business: not a contract clause but a market. A vendor meets FedRAMP once and sells to every agency.
- Derives from
- NIST SP 800-53B, OMB Circular A-130 (and further up: NIST SP 800-53, FIPS 199 and FIPS 200, FISMA 2014)
- Feeds into
- nothing here derives from it yet
- Read it at
- FedRAMP documents public
- The rules, machine-readable public what this instance reads
- On this instance
- 2026.10.13.01 · 5 versions held · every version and what changed loaded 15 Oct
NIST, with DISA, NASA and the Los Alamos National Laboratory
One rule set per macOS release, each rule carrying its references to 800-53, 800-171, the STIG, CIS and CMMC, from which any of those baselines can be generated.
The cleanest answer on this page to 'how are these normalised?'. One rule, many citations, and a build step that emits whichever baseline you asked for.
- Derives from
- NIST SP 800-53, NIST SP 800-171, CIS Benchmarks, DISA STIGs, CNSSI 1253 (and further up: FISMA 2014, FIPS 199 and FIPS 200, NIST SP 800-53B, DFARS 252.204-7012, CIS Critical Security Controls, DISA Security Requirements Guides, CNSS policy, DoDI 8500.01 and 8510.01)
- Feeds into
- nothing here derives from it yet
- Read it at
- macos_security on GitHub public
- On this instance
- iOS 26 Guidance, Revision 3.0 (6262df0) · 3 versions held · every version and what changed loaded 20 Oct
DISA (Defense Information Systems Agency)
Security Technical Implementation Guides: per-product rules, each with a severity (CAT I, II, III), the exact check text and the exact fix text.
The most concrete rung there is, and the reason this site exists. A STIG rule tells you the command to run, which no catalogue ever does — and because it is free and public, it is read far outside the DoD.
- Derives from
- DISA Security Requirements Guides (and further up: NIST SP 800-53, CNSSI 1253, DoDI 8500.01 and 8510.01, FISMA 2014, FIPS 199 and FIPS 200, CNSS policy)
- Feeds into
- NASA-SPEC-2600 (ASCS), macOS Security Compliance Project, DISA STIG GPO package, DISA STIG Intune package
- Read it at
- STIG downloads public
- STIG Viewer and tools public
- On this instance
- V1R1 · 19 versions held · every version and what changed loaded 20 Oct
Microsoft
The vendor's own recommended settings for each Windows and Office release, shipped as GPO backups and policy rules in the Security Compliance Toolkit.
The vendor is a publisher too, and often the first one: Microsoft's baseline for a new Windows release lands months before the STIG for it does.
- Derives from
- nothing on this page — it is a root
- Feeds into
- nothing here derives from it yet
- Read it at
- Windows security baselines public
- Security Compliance Toolkit public what this instance reads
- On this instance
- v2 · 10 versions held · every version and what changed loaded 15 Oct
Center for Internet Security
Consensus hardening benchmarks per platform at two levels, each recommendation with its audit and remediation steps and its rationale.
The private sector's STIG. Free to read under CIS's own terms, licensed for use, and the thing most non-government hardening actually derives from.
- Derives from
- CIS Critical Security Controls
- Feeds into
- NASA-SPEC-2600 (ASCS), macOS Security Compliance Project
- Read it at
- CIS Benchmarks free account
- CIS WorkBench free account where the owner's own PDF copy comes from
- On this instance
- tracked as a source, nothing loaded yet
NSA Cybersecurity Information Sheets
Configuration settingUS defenseUS federal civilianPrivate businessUS National Security Agency
Short, specific hardening guidance on one subject at a time — network infrastructure, Kubernetes, PowerShell, cloud identity — often with other countries' agencies as co-signers.
The gap-filler. When something new needs hardening and no catalogue or benchmark covers it yet, this is usually the first public guidance to exist.
- Derives from
- nothing on this page — it is a root
- Feeds into
- nothing here derives from it yet
- Read it at
- Advisories and guidance public
NIST
The Open Security Controls Assessment Language: catalogues, profiles, baselines, implementation statements and assessment results as JSON, XML or YAML.
The format that makes any of this computable. A baseline as an OSCAL profile is a document that says 'this catalogue, these controls, these parameters' — which a program can resolve, and a person cannot be trusted to.
- Derives from
- NIST SP 800-53 (and further up: FISMA 2014, FIPS 199 and FIPS 200)
- Feeds into
- nothing here derives from it yet
- Read it at
- OSCAL public
- NIST's OSCAL content public
SCAP and the National Checklist Program
Check and evidenceUS federal civilianUS defensePrivate businessNASANIST
XCCDF for the checklist, OVAL for the test, CPE for the product, and the NCP repository that holds the published checklists for each platform.
This is what a scanner reads. The same STIG exists as prose for a person and as SCAP content for a tool, and the NCP is the public shelf both come off.
- Derives from
- NIST SP 800-53 (and further up: FISMA 2014, FIPS 199 and FIPS 200)
- Feeds into
- nothing here derives from it yet
- Read it at
- National Checklist Program repository public
- SCAP public
CISA
A free self-assessment tool that walks an organisation through a chosen standard — CSF, 800-53, 800-171, CIS Controls, ICS standards — and reports the gaps.
The one entry here that is software rather than a document, and the easiest way for a small organisation to assess itself against a catalogue it did not write.
- Derives from
- NIST CSF 2.0, NIST SP 800-53, CIS Critical Security Controls (and further up: FISMA 2014, FIPS 199 and FIPS 200)
- Feeds into
- nothing here derives from it yet
- Read it at
- CSET public
- cisagov/cset on GitHub public
Names that collide
Most of the difficulty in learning this field is that several different things share a name. Each reading below is real; none of them is the wrong answer, so the thing to do is say which one you mean.
- CSET
- NASA OCIO — the Cybersecurity Standards and Engineering Team, which writes NASA's own configuration specifications (the ASCS set). source agency sign-in
- CISA — the Cyber Security Evaluation Tool, free software for assessing yourself against a chosen standard. source public
- Georgetown University — the Center for Security and Emerging Technology, a policy research centre — no controls, no baselines. source public
- FISMA, not FISA
- FISMA — the Federal Information Security Modernization Act: the statute behind every federal control on this site. source public
- FISA — the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act: surveillance authority law. It publishes no controls, baselines or standards, and nothing on this site derives from it. source public
- CSI
- NIST, CSRC and NVD
- 800-53, 800-53A, 800-53B
What this page is not
It is not legal advice, and it is not a compliance determination: whether a given system is obliged to meet a given baseline is a question for the people who authorise it. Every link here goes to a publisher's own address, and the access chip says what that publisher requires of a reader — this site adds no access to anything. Nothing restricted is reproduced here. For the vocabulary, see how to read this site; for what this instance is actually holding, All standards and the change register.