Standards and frameworks · Governance and coordination

CIS Benchmarks CIS Benchmarks

PublishedFree · 2026

Summary

The Center for Internet Security benchmarks are secure configuration guides for specific products: operating systems, servers, cloud services, network devices, browsers, office applications, databases, containers and mobile devices, with more than a hundred guides covering over twenty-five product families. Each recommendation explains which setting to adopt, why, how to check it and how to apply it. Recommendations are grouped into profiles: level 1 brings together baseline settings that can be applied without much impact on operation, level 2 those for environments needing more security, and some guides also have a profile aligned with the US Department of Defense STIGs. They are written by consensus by a community of experts and vendors and are used to implement the secure configuration required by the CIS Controls and many regulations.

Reference

CIS Benchmarks

Official title

CIS Benchmarks

Body

CIS

Type

Industry requirements

Status

Published

Published

2026

Access to the text

Free

Sectors

• Governance and coordination
• Cloud computing

Notes

Each benchmark has its own version and is updated when the product it covers changes, so the date in this entry only indicates the year the state of the catalogue refers to. The PDFs are free for non-commercial use after registration; the editable and machine-readable formats, the CIS-CAT Pro assessment tool and the pre-configured images (CIS Hardened Images) are reserved for paying CIS SecureSuite members or sold separately.

Last verified

2 November 2026 (verified via web)

Metadata and summary: CC BY 4.0 · JSON

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