Essential Eight Compliance
The Essential Eight is a set of cybersecurity strategies developed by the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) to help organisations protect themselves against various cyber threats. These eight mitigation strategies are designed to be a baseline for cybersecurity and are known to significantly reduce the risk of cyber incidents.
The eight strategies are:
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Application Control: Prevents the execution of unapproved or malicious programs.
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Patch Applications: Ensures applications are up to date to mitigate vulnerabilities.
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Configure Microsoft Office Macro Settings: Controls the use of macros to prevent malicious code execution.
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User Application Hardening: Restricts access to features that can be exploited by attackers.
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Restrict Administrative Privileges: Limits administrative access to reduce the risk of privilege misuse.
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Patch Operating Systems: Keeps operating systems updated to protect against known vulnerabilities.
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Multi-factor Authentication: Adds an extra layer of security to user logins.
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Regular Backups: Ensures data can be restored in the event of a cyber incident.
Implementing these strategies can make it significantly harder for adversaries to compromise systems
How Cornerstone Cyber Can Help
At Cornerstone Cyber, we help you nail the Essential Eight; without getting stuck in it.
We focus on equipping your team with secure-by-design Microsoft 365 configurations that meet ACSC’s guidance and make real-world sense.
Here’s how:
Understand your maturity
We begin with an Essential Eight Assessment; a guided review of how your organisation measures up against ACSC maturity levels.
We identify the gaps that matter most to your business outcomes, not just technical compliance, and define clear, staged targets that make progress achievable.
The outcome?
A plain-English view of where you stand and what matters most next.
Prioritise what moves the needle
We help you design a practical roadmap that balances risk reduction, effort, and business impact.
From patching cadence and privileged access management to application control, MFA, and backup resilience. We focus on the few changes that deliver the biggest uplift in maturity and resilience.
No tool quotas. No unnecessary projects. Just aligned, defensible progress.
Strengthen capability, not dependency
Our role isn’t to run your cyber program:
It’s to help you own it.
We equip your internal IT and governance teams with the frameworks, templates, and evidence they need to sustain and demonstrate maturity independently.
That means your Essential Eight alignment stays maintained, measurable, and meaningful; long after we’ve stepped out.
The business outcome
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Clarity on where you stand and what matters most
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Control over how you progress, at a sustainable pace
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Confidence to demonstrate maturity to auditors, boards, and clients
Because Essential Eight shouldn’t feel like a compliance trap;
it should be your foundation for secure, scalable growth.
Why it matters for your business.
Implementing the Essential Eight is not just about compliance; it's about building a robust cybersecurity foundation
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Reduces Risk:
Mitigates up to 85% of common cyber threats.
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Builds Trust:
Demonstrates a commitment to cybersecurity to clients, partners, and stakeholders.
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Enables Opportunities:
Positions your organisation to work with government agencies and large enterprises that require adherence to cybersecurity standards.
Who Needs it?
While the Essential Eight is beneficial for all organisations, certain sectors have specific obligations:
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Federal Government Departments
Mandated to implement the Essential Eight to Maturity Level Two under the Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF).
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Critical Infrastructure Entities
Strongly encouraged to adopt the Essential Eight as part of their risk management practices under the Security of Critical Infrastructure (SOCI) Act.
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Private Sector and SMBs
While not legally bound, these organisations are under increasing pressure to implement the Essential Eight to:-
Meet industry and partner expectations
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Strengthen cyber resilience
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Satisfy contractual obligations with government and enterprise customers
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Third- and Fourth-Party Suppliers Supply chain risk is in the spotlight. Larger organisations are demanding verifiable security controls from their vendors, including Essential Eight maturity, particularly when handling sensitive data, systems access, or integration with core services. If you’re part of someone else’s supply chain, you’re part of their risk; and that means compliance expectations are creeping downstream, fast.
If you want to see the up-to-date information on the Australian Government's cyber website:
https://www.cyber.gov.au/resources-business-and-government/essential-cybersecurity/essential-eight
