CIS Controls v8 7.2 — Establish and Maintain a Remediation Process

What this control requires

Establish and maintain a risk-based remediation strategy documented in a remediation process, with monthly, or more frequent, reviews.

In plain English

Establish and maintain a risk-based remediation strategy documented in a remediation process, with monthly, or more frequent, reviews. In practice, this means you can prove you establish and maintain remediation process-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

The CIS Controls are an industry-vetted, prioritised defence: skipping a safeguard widens the attack surface that the safeguards above and below it assume is closed. Audit frameworks (FedRAMP, PCI DSS, HIPAA) all cite CIS as evidence of due care.

This control is rated critical in the source catalogue. Treat gaps here as production incidents in the risk register, not housekeeping.

What an auditor looks for

A CIS-aligned reviewer wants to see (a) which Implementation Group you are targeting, (b) a documented owner for the safeguard, and (c) a tooling or process artefact (config, scan output, ticket) that proves the safeguard runs on the cadence the control demands.

Within Respond, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control 7.2) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Policy Management

Docs. Keep each policy in version-controlled Markdown alongside the code that implements it; ship a signed PDF snapshot at each annual review and link the SHA into the SoA.

Operational checklist

• Establish And Maintain. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
• Scope: remediation process, reviews.

Evidence to collect

• Policy Document. A signed and version-controlled policy / standard / procedure document.
• Infra Scan. Continuous infrastructure-posture telemetry — AWS Config, Azure Policy compliance, GCP Organisation Policy, Wiz / Prisma findings.

Signed policy or standard documents the safeguard. Focus: Establish and Maintain a Remediation Process.

Common pitfalls

• Policies that no engineer has read; the version in Confluence drifts from the version that's actually being enforced.

How it maps to other frameworks

Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.

• SOC 2 (2017 TSC) P8.1 — Inquiry and Complaint Management Process
• HIPAA (45 CFR Part 164) 164.308(a)(1)(ii)(B) — Security Management Process - Risk Management
• ISO/IEC 27001:2022 A.5.5 — Contact with authorities
• GDPR Article 83 — General conditions for imposing administrative fines

Related controls in CIS Controls v8

• Control 7.7 — Remediate Detected Vulnerabilities
• Control 17.3 — Establish and Maintain an Enterprise Process for Reporting Incidents
• Control 2.3 — Address Unauthorized Software
• Control 17.4 — Establish and Maintain an Incident Response Process
• Control 1.2 — Address Unauthorized Assets
• Control 5.5 — Establish and Maintain an Inventory of Service Accounts

References

• Center for Internet Security — CIS Controls v8
• Catalogue identifier: Control 7.2

Topics: governance riskpolicy management