Blu3berryPi

Technical Stuff: How Blu3berryPi Uses CIS Controls v8

Public-facing, we speak plain English. Under the hood, Blu3berryPi is anchored to the CIS Controls v8, with IG1 Safeguards used as a practical baseline for small and mid-sized organizations.

Why CIS Controls v8 and IG1?

CIS v8 is a globally recognized, vendor-neutral standard based on real-world attack data. IG1 Safeguards provide a pragmatic set of “must-have” defenses for organizations without large security teams—which matches Blu3berryPi’s target clients.

In practice, that means Blu3berryPi:

  • Uses IG1 Safeguards as the default hygiene floor for implementations.
  • Organizes work streams around CIS control families to maintain structure and repeatability.
  • Can scale toward IG2/IG3 where regulatory or contractual pressure requires it.
  • Produces artifacts that can be mapped to other frameworks via CIS mappings (e.g., SOC 2, NIST CSF).

How IG1 Shapes Our Method

Our five-step method—learn, check, plan, fix, and keep healthy—lines up with IG1 expectations across the 18 CIS Controls.

Assessment & Baseline

  • Use IG1 Safeguards as a checklist to determine fully/partially/not-implemented status.
  • Capture findings by CIS control family (inventory, access, configuration, email/web, backup, etc.).
  • Gather “current state” evidence: screenshots, configuration snippets, exports, and process descriptions.

Planning & Prioritization

  • Prioritize IG1 gaps based on likelihood, business impact, and implementation difficulty.
  • Bundle related Safeguards into small, coherent work packages (e.g., “tighten identity,” “harden email,” “fix backups”).
  • Align changes with existing IT/MSP tooling to avoid parallel or conflicting processes.

Coverage Across the 18 CIS Controls

Blu3berryPi’s services are designed to touch all 18 CIS Controls at the IG1 level, with emphasis on control areas that most affect small and mid-sized business risk.

Controls 1–2: Inventory

Establish usable inventories of hardware, software, accounts, and cloud services. Tie entries to owners, basic criticality, and simple tagging to support patching, access review, and incident response.

Controls 3–4: Data & Secure Configuration

Identify key data locations, apply reasonable access boundaries, and define baseline configurations for endpoints, servers, and SaaS platforms aligned to IG1 expectations.

Controls 5–6: Account & Access Management

Implement stronger authentication (including MFA), reduce shared accounts, and reinforce joiner/mover/leaver processes to minimize stale and excessive access.

Controls 7–10: Vulnerability, Malware, Email & Web

Define patch cadences and exception handling, tune endpoint protections, configure DNS/web filtering, and harden email defenses against phishing and malicious content.

Controls 11–13: Data Recovery & Monitoring

Validate that backup jobs not only run but restore successfully, enable meaningful logging, and implement lightweight alerting appropriate for IG1 environments.

Controls 14–18: People, Providers & Governance

Deliver role-appropriate awareness, create simple oversight mechanisms for MSPs and other providers, and implement right-sized policies and incident procedures that staff can realistically follow.

For Auditors, Insurers, and MSPs

Blu3berryPi is prepared to “show the work” beneath the simplified client narrative.

  • Findings and recommendations can be tagged to specific CIS Controls and IG1 Safeguards.
  • Evidence bundles can be structured to support attestation against IG1 expectations.
  • Optional crosswalks to other frameworks (e.g., SOC 2, NIST CSF) can be produced when needed.
  • We coordinate with MSPs to ensure security changes are compatible with their operational model.

The goal is simple: keep client conversations human, while maintaining a standards-based backbone that technical and compliance stakeholders recognize and trust.