NIST CSF supporting concepts

  • Release version: Yokohama
  • Updated July 31, 2025
  • 2 minutes to read
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    Summary of NIST CSF supporting concepts

    The NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) supporting concepts provide a structured approach to managing and assessing cybersecurity risks using the ServiceNow® GRC platform. These concepts help organizations align their cybersecurity activities with NIST CSF guidance, enabling improved risk management, compliance, and security posture.

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    Key Concepts

    • Target: The foundational entity used across ServiceNow GRC products and Use Case Accelerators to represent assets or systems. Targets can be linked to profiles and are central to applying cybersecurity activities.
    • Critical Infrastructure: Vital physical or virtual systems whose compromise impacts cybersecurity, national security, and public health or safety.
    • Implementation Tiers: Levels that help organizations assess and prioritize cybersecurity risk management processes. Targets can be evaluated based on these tiers using attributes in the Target table.
    • Cybersecurity Activity: Defined activities combining Target, Function, and Category that map to cybersecurity policies and compliance requirements. These activities help identify gaps, risks, issues, and guide action plans to improve security compliance.
    • Functions: High-level domains organizing cybersecurity activities into Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover, and Govern. Functions facilitate risk management and continuous improvement.
    • Categories and Subcategories: Subdivisions of functions that specify groups of cybersecurity outcomes and detailed technical or management activities. Examples include Asset Management and Identity Management. These are used to evaluate cybersecurity requirements and provide detailed insights.
    • Implementation State: The documented status of cybersecurity activities, indicating whether they are implemented or planned.
    • Gaps: Control objectives lacking implemented controls for a given target’s profile.
    • Non-compliant Controls: Controls that fail compliance due to implementation issues identified for the target.
    • Risks, Issues, and Failed Indicators: Various assessments related to control effectiveness and risk exposure for targets, helping identify areas needing remediation.
    • Action Plans: Remediation steps created to address issues related to controls and risks for targets within cybersecurity activities.

    Practical Application for ServiceNow Customers

    By leveraging these NIST CSF supporting concepts within ServiceNow GRC, customers can:

    • Define and manage cybersecurity targets aligned with critical infrastructure and organizational priorities.
    • Assess cybersecurity posture using implementation tiers and detailed functions/categories mapping.
    • Identify and document cybersecurity gaps, non-compliant controls, and risks systematically.
    • Create targeted action plans to remediate identified issues and improve compliance.
    • Continuously monitor and update the implementation state of cybersecurity activities to track progress and maturity.

    This structured framework ensures organizations have a clear, actionable view of their cybersecurity risk management aligned with NIST CSF standards.

    Familiarize yourself with these concepts, developed from the NIST CSF guidance.

    Concept Description
    Target The target is the foundation of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) Use Case Accelerator and all related concepts.

    The target is a shared table between the ServiceNow® GRC products and several Use Case Accelerators. They are similar to the concept of entities in the core GRC applications. They are optionally linked to profiles, but are used for any attributes that are specific to the Use Case Accelerators.
    Critical infrastructure (or critical in NIST CSF application usage) Vital physical or virtual systems and assets that have a serious impact on cybersecurity, national economic security, and national public health or safety.
    Implementation tiers Helps an organization view cybersecurity risks and the processes they use to manage those risks.

    Tiers are prioritized for achieving cybereecurity objectives. With the NIST CSF applications, organizations can evaluate targets from the implementation tier view, which uses the Tier attribute on Target table.
    Cybersecurity activity Cybersecurity policies and requirements are found in the ServiceNow® GRC Policy and Compliance Management application. The application provides guidelines for understanding cybersecurity outcomes that need to be achieved to strengthen cybersecurity practices and enhance security compliance.

    These activities in the NIST CSF application as are a combination of a Target, Function, and Category. NIST CSF activities evaluate cybersecurity requirements for Targets, which provides detailed insights into gaps, non-compliant controls, risks, issues, failed indicators, and action plans and when they are addressed. Also, they help organizations strengthen their security compliance position.
    Functions Functions organize basic cybersecurity activities at their highest level. These Functions are Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover, and Govern. They help an organization by organizing information, enabling risk management decisions, addressing threats, and learning from previous activities to improve its management of cybersecurity risk.

    In NIST CSF, functions select relevant cybersecurity outcomes for activities and organize them.
    Category Categories are the subdivisions of functions that are broken into groups of cybersecurity outcomes. Examples of categories include: Asset Management, Identity Management and Access Control, and Detection Processes.

    Subcategories are used to divide a category into specific outcomes of technical and management activities. They provide a set of results that can help support achievement of the outcomes in each category. Examples of subcategories include: External information systems are cataloged, Data-at-rest is protected, and Notifications from detection systems are investigated.

    The Framework Core identifies underlying categories and subcategories for each function as cybersecurity policies and their details as policy statements. The NIST CSF categories define the cybersecurity activities for targets and uses the associated subcategories to evaluate cybersecurity requirements to provide additional insight.
    Implementation state State of the cybersecurity activity, whether implemented or planned for the future. It is possible to document the implementation state of a cybersecurity activity.
    Gaps Control objectives of the cybersecurity policy that do not have any controls in-place for the target's profile identified in the cybersecurity activity.
    Non-compliant controls Cybersecurity controls that are considered non-compliant because of implementation issues and have been found for the target's entity, which is identified in the cybersecurity activity.
    Risks Risks associated with the controls implemented for the target's entity, which is identified in the cybersecurity activity.
    Issues Issues with controls and risks for the target's entity, which are identified in the cybersecurity activity.
    Failed indicators Failed indicators of controls and risks implemented for the target's entity, which is identified in the cybersecurity activity.
    Action plans Action plans for issues for the target's entity, which are identified in the cybersecurity activity.