NIST CSF 2.0 with an AI Focus: Functions, Focus Areas and European Obligations

All courses / AI Red Team / Module 1 / Chapter 3

Learning objectives

After the lesson the participant can:

• Explain the difference between a Current Profile, a Target Profile and a Tier, and identify the heat-map anti-pattern.
• Apply the three focus areas as three questions to one CSF Category.
• Map one control to the obligations it serves in NIS 2, DORA and the AI Act, as the chapter attributes them.
• Draft a Category entry of a CSF profile as code that distinguishes evidence from attestation.

Key concepts

Outcomes, not controls

The CSF Core is a hierarchy of outcomes: six Functions, 22 Categories and 106 Subcategories. DE.CM-01 says that networks are monitored to find potentially adverse events, but not which sensor or detection rules. CSF is voluntary and creates no obligation.

Profiles and tiers

A Current Profile records the outcomes achieved today and a Target Profile those chosen as priorities; the gap produces an action plan. Tiers, from Tier 1 Partial to Tier 4 Adaptive, describe risk-management practice as a whole and are not a maturity score for each Category.

GV.OC-03 as the bridge

The Subcategory on legal, regulatory and contractual requirements is achieved when each applicable requirement is linked to the outcomes and controls that meet it, with an owner and evidence, not by a list of laws on an intranet page.

Assure once, comply many

The principle from Architecture as Code: a control is written once, mapped to every obligation it serves and linked to evidence that it is enforced. NIS 2 Article 21(2)(j) and DORA Article 9 both map to PR.AA, so one assessment serves both regimes.

Evidence versus attestation

From AI Governance, Chapter 11: an attestation is a person asserting, while evidence is machine-generated. In the profile every claimed outcome is linked to evidence or marked as attested with person and date; a profile whose Protect and Detect outcomes are mostly attested has not yet been tested.

Interactive exercises

Do them here and get feedback at once. Choose a card and then where it belongs, or drag it.

Teaching plan

Discussion

1. Where does your organisation's current reporting to the board confuse tiers with a maturity score per Category, and what decision has that distorted?
2. The chapter advises setting targets deliberately unevenly. Which Categories would you concentrate on first, and on what grounds?
3. What changes for a customer when its managed security service provider is itself within the scope of Implementing Regulation 2024/2690?

Written exercise

Self-test

Choose an answer to see whether it is right, or open the answer below each question.

1. What does the Cyber AI Profile add to CSF 2.0, according to the chapter?

   1. A seventh Function for artificial intelligence, placed at the centre beside Govern
   2. Four new Categories for model security under Protect and Detect
   3. A binding set of controls that deployers of high-risk AI systems must implement before go-live
   4. No Functions or Categories; it reads the existing outcomes through three focus areas
   Show the answer

   D. No Functions or Categories; it reads the existing outcomes through three focus areas
   The chapter states that the Cyber AI Profile adds no Functions or Categories and instead reads the existing outcomes through three focus areas, which are three questions to put to every Category.

2. Which practice does the chapter name as a familiar anti-pattern?

   1. Keeping the risk assessment and Statement of Applicability inside the ISMS
   2. A heat map with a number from one to four in every Category, presented as CSF maturity
   3. Recording the version of the Cyber AI Profile used, so that a later revision becomes a reviewed change
   4. Setting targets unevenly across the Categories of the profile
   Show the answer

   B. A heat map with a number from one to four in every Category, presented as CSF maturity
   Tiers characterise risk-management practice as a whole. Presenting a tier-like number per Category as CSF maturity confuses the two, and the chapter calls this a familiar anti-pattern.

3. In the mapping the chapter gives, where do DORA Articles 24 to 27 on resilience testing, including threat-led penetration testing, land in CSF?

   1. ID.IM Improvement
   2. GV.SC Cybersecurity Supply Chain Risk Management
   3. RS.MA Incident Management
   4. PR.AT Awareness and Training
   Show the answer

   A. ID.IM Improvement
   The chapter maps Articles 24 to 27 on resilience testing to ID.IM, Articles 17 to 19 to RS.MA, RS.AN and RS.CO, and Articles 28 to 30 on ICT third-party risk to GV.SC.