Misconfigurations, inconsistent patching and incomplete control coverage remain some of the most common causes of compromise. The Essential Eight assessments and uplift provide a proven and prioritised set of mitigation strategies that help protect organisations from real attacks.
The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) Essential Eight gives organisations a measurable maturity scale that reflects how well their controls withstand increasingly capable adversaries.
dotSec performs independent Essential Eight maturity assessments across all four maturity levels. Our assessments identify how well your organisation meets the ASD maturity requirements, which risks remain and which improvements will deliver meaningful uplift.
dotSec will use the ASD/ACSC Essential Eight maturity model to assess your organisation against four maturity levels:
Our assessments identify how well your organisation meets the ASD maturity requirements, which risks remain and which improvements will deliver meaningful uplift.
Evaluation against the Essential Eight maturity model establishes a clear baseline for stakeholders. Your organisation will benefit from an authoritative and evidence-based view of Essential Eight maturity, supporting planning, budgeting and decision-making at all levels.
Some providers rely entirely on automated scanning, and market that output as an Essential Eight assessment.
Automated tools are useful but they cannot evaluate policy coverage, configuration consistency, privileged access designs, operating procedures or the subtle differences between intended controls and how they function in real environments. There’s an inherent risk in environments that have passed a scan, but which are later found to fail to correctly implement the guidelines, especially when evidence, procedures and configurations were reviewed.
A proper Essential Eight maturity assessment requires document analysis, interviews, observation, sampling and validation of control operation. That is the standard that dotSec applies.
Baseline Maturity Assessment (Levels Zero to Three)
dotSec begins with a structured, independent assessment of your current alignment with the ASD Essential Eight maturity model. This includes evidence reviews, interviews, configuration sampling and technical analysis across selected systems, cloud services and user devices.
The objective is to determine your organisation’s maturity level for each of the eight mitigation strategies, from Level Zero through to Level Three. The assessment identifies where controls operate well, where they fall short of ASD expectations and where control design differs from actual operation.
Your baseline report provides a clear, factual and defensible view of current maturity that can be shared with IT, leadership and external stakeholders.
Control Effectiveness Verification
Once the baseline is established, dotSec verifies how effectively the in-scope controls operate day to day. This includes reviewing configuration consistency, analysing operational processes, checking evidence of repeatability, and validating that implemented controls genuinely meet the intent of ASD’s maturity level requirements.
This step highlights the difference between “controls exist on paper” and “controls operate as designed”. It also identifies systemic issues such as configuration drift, dependency on manual workarounds or gaps that automated scanning tools simply cannot detect.
Your verification report provides practical insights into which controls deliver real protection and which require redesign or improvement to reach higher maturity levels.
Targeted Uplift Roadmap and Implementation Support
dotSec delivers a prioritised and actionable improvement roadmap that aligns with ASD’s maturity model, your operational constraints and your risk profile. Recommendations are structured to support rapid uplift where it has the greatest effect and strategic changes where deeper improvements are required.
The roadmap outlines the steps needed to progress from current maturity to your desired maturity level. This can include improved patching cycles, configuration hardening, privileged access controls, application control policies, backup integrity processes and procedure updates.
dotSec can continue to assist by validating uplift progress, advising on control redesign and supporting ongoing improvement toward sustained Essential Eight maturity.
DotSec delivers Essential Eight assessment and uplift services that are practical, evidence driven and don’t just parrot the output of some scanning tool. We stand out for several reasons:
Answer: The first step is to evaluate your environment against the ASD Essential Eight maturity model. This initial evaluation shows how closely your controls map to the expected behaviours and outcomes at each maturity level, from Zero to Three. Once that’s done, you have a line in the sand, and you are better positioned to prioritise your uplift journey.
Reference: https://www.cyber.gov.au/business-government/asds-cyber-security-frameworks/essential-eight/essential-eight-maturity-model
Answer: As they say in the love story, it’s complicated. Well not really but: The term “Essential Eight” is used to refer to the most effective (top eight) ASD-developed strategies to help organisations reduce the risks associated with various threats. The full collection of strategies is referred to as “Strategies to mitigate cybersecurity incidents” and there are 37 of those. And since it’s good to have a hand with all this, the ASD has published the Essential Eight maturity model to both support the implementation of the Essential Eight, and to give organisations a way to measure and describe their level of cyber security maturity, with reference to the Essential Eight
References: The Essential Eight maturity model
Answer: In short, lots!
First up, evaluation of your organisation’s maturity level will help to identify and prioritise practical improvement opportunities. Our assessors highlight areas where the implementation of a mitigation strategy does not meet the intended maturity outcomes. Recommendations are tailored to uplift your posture in a way that makes operational and business sense.
Secondly, a formal exercise allows your organisation to prioritise cyber-risk reduction. The Essential Eight is designed to reduce credible and common threats. dotSec highlights the improvements that will reduce risk quickly and effectively while preparing you for higher maturity levels.
And lastly, evaluation against the Essential Eight maturity model establishes a clear baseline for stakeholders. Your report provides an authoritative and evidence-based view of Essential Eight maturity across the organisation. This supports planning, budgeting and decision-making at all levels.
If you want an Essential Eight maturity assessment or support uplifting controls to higher maturity levels, dotSec can help.
Each engagement is tailored to your environment, your risks and your operational goals.
Contact us to schedule a discovery discussion and begin your Essential Eight uplift.
