What is an Essential 8 assessment?
An Essential 8 assessment is an assessment of an organization’s cybersecurity posture against the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s (ACSC) Essential Eight mitigation strategies. This assessment is conducted using the Essential Eight Maturity Model which is based on mitigating increasing levels of adversary targeting and tradecraft.
The Essential Eight Maturity Model is divided into three target maturity levels: Maturity Level One, Maturity Level Two, and Maturity Level Three.
Each of these levels represents a different level of security maturity, with Maturity Level One being the lowest and Maturity Level Three being the highest.
At Maturity Level One, an organization is expected to have implemented the basic controls of the Essential Eight. These controls include implementing application whitelisting, patching applications, patching operating systems, using multi-factor authentication, using restricted administrative privileges, using secure configurations, using email filtering, and using endpoint security.
At Maturity Level Two, an organization is expected to have implemented the basic controls of the Essential Eight, as well as additional controls such as application control, user activity monitoring, and data loss prevention.
At Maturity Level Three, an organization is expected to have implemented the basic controls of the Essential Eight, as well as additional controls such as application control, user activity monitoring, data loss prevention, and advanced threat protection. An Essential 8 assessment is an important tool for organizations to assess their cybersecurity posture and ensure that they are taking the necessary steps to protect their data and systems from malicious actors.
Useful References
Official Guides
- What is the ASD Essential Eight?
- Is the ASD Essential Eight mandatory?
- Do Australian businesses need to report data breaches?
- What are the objectives of ASD Essential 8?
- ASD Essential 8: Application whitelisting
Blogs & Thought Leadership
- ASD Essential 8 vs ISO 27001
- ASD Essential 8 vs Right Fit For Risk (RFFR)
- ASD Essential 8 vs PCI-DSS
- ASD Essential 8 vs NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF)
- ASD Essential 8 vs ASD IRAP
Answers
Hear from world-renowned GRC analyst Michael Rasmussen about 6clicks and why it's breakthrough approach is winning
Get up and running with 6clicks in just a matter of hours.

'Push-down' standards to teams
'Push' your standard templates, controls, and risk libraries to your teams.

'Roll up' analytics for reporting
Roll-up analytics for consolidated reporting across your teams.
Our customers have spoken.
They genuinely love 6clicks.
"The best cyber GRC platform for businesses and advisors."
David Simpson | CyberCX
"We chose 6clicks not only for our clients, but also our internal use”
Chief Risk Officer | Publically Listed
"We use Hub & Spoke globally for our cyber compliance program. Love it."
Head of Compliance | Fortune 500






"The 6clicks solution simplifies and strengthens risk, compliance, and control processes across entities and can grow and adapt as the organization changes and evolves."
Michael Rasmussen
GRC 20/20 Research LLC
6clicks is powered by AI and includes all the content you need.
Our unique 6clicks Hub & Spoke architecture makes it simple to use and deploy.
.png)

.png)

.png)
.png)