Cybersecurity Directory: Purpose and Scope

The Cybersecurity Directory at CyberAuditAuthority.com serves as a structured reference index of cybersecurity frameworks, compliance standards, audit tools, and practitioner resources relevant to organizations operating under US federal and state regulatory requirements. This page defines the geographic scope of the directory, explains how to navigate its listings, and documents the standards applied during inclusion and ongoing maintenance decisions. Understanding the structure of this resource helps practitioners, auditors, and compliance officers locate authoritative references without wading through vendor-generated promotional content.

Geographic Coverage

The directory maintains a national scope covering all 50 US states, with particular emphasis on regulatory environments established by federal agencies including the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights.

Federal baseline frameworks—including NIST SP 800-53 (Security and Privacy Controls for Information Systems and Organizations) and the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF)—apply across industries and jurisdictions, making them foundational reference points regardless of where a covered entity operates. State-level regulatory requirements are catalogued where they establish obligations distinct from federal minimums. California's CCPA (Civil Code §1798.100 et seq.) and the New York SHIELD Act represent two of the most substantive state-level cybersecurity and data protection regimes currently active and indexed within this directory.

Sector-specific coverage extends to healthcare (HIPAA, 45 CFR Parts 160 and 164), financial services (the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act Safeguards Rule, 16 CFR Part 314), critical infrastructure (CISA's 16 designated critical infrastructure sectors), and federal contractor environments (CMMC 2.0 under 32 CFR Part 170).

How to Use This Resource

The Cybersecurity Listings section organizes indexed entries into three classification tiers based on function:

1. Regulatory and compliance frameworks — Mandatory or widely adopted standards tied to enforceable statutes (HIPAA, GLBA Safeguards Rule, PCI DSS for payment card environments, CMMC 2.0).
2. Voluntary guidance and best-practice frameworks — Standards issued by recognized bodies without direct enforcement authority, including NIST CSF, ISO/IEC 27001, and CIS Controls v8.
3. Audit and assessment tools — Methodologies, checklists, and evaluation instruments used to measure conformance against the frameworks above.

The distinction between enforceable regulations and voluntary frameworks is operationally significant. Organizations subject to HIPAA face civil monetary penalties reaching $1.9 million per violation category per year (HHS Office for Civil Rights enforcement data), while failure to meet a voluntary framework like NIST CSF carries no statutory penalty—though CISA strongly recommends CSF adoption for critical infrastructure operators.

For deeper context on any indexed topic, the Cybersecurity Topic Context section provides background on regulatory drivers, historical breach patterns, and the agency mandates that shape each compliance domain.

Standards for Inclusion

Entries are evaluated against four discrete criteria before inclusion:

1. Regulatory standing or recognized authority — The source must be a government agency, a recognized standards body (NIST, ISO, CIS, PCI SSC), or a statute/regulation with enforceable status in at least one US jurisdiction.
2. Public accessibility — Primary documents, implementing regulations, or official guidance must be publicly available at no cost through an official government or standards-body domain.
3. Active maintenance status — Frameworks and regulations must be under active maintenance or have a defined enforcement status. Deprecated standards are flagged, not removed, to preserve audit trail utility.
4. Topical relevance to cybersecurity audit and compliance — General IT publications, marketing whitepapers, and vendor-specific product documentation do not qualify, regardless of the publishing organization's reputation.

This approach contrasts directly with general-purpose cybersecurity resource lists, which frequently commingle regulatory mandates with promotional content. The boundary is held at the point of independence: an inclusion-eligible source carries no commercial interest in how an audited organization responds to its guidance.

How the Directory Is Maintained

Directory maintenance follows a structured review cycle tied to regulatory publication calendars and standards-body release schedules. The process operates in four phases:

1. Monitoring — Federal Register publications, agency enforcement bulletins, and standards-body announcements are tracked against indexed entries. CISA's Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog, updated on a rolling basis at cisa.gov/known-exploited-vulnerabilities-catalog, represents one actively monitored signal source.
2. Validation — Proposed additions and updates are evaluated against the four inclusion criteria above. Entries failing active maintenance status are reclassified as historical references.
3. Classification update — When a regulatory framework changes enforcement tier—such as the FTC's 2023 amendments to the Safeguards Rule extending multi-factor authentication requirements to non-banking financial institutions—affected entries are reclassified and annotated with the amendment effective date.
4. Publication — Updated entries appear in the Cybersecurity Listings section with version or amendment identifiers where applicable.

No directory entry is modified without a traceable regulatory or standards-body event as the trigger. Editorial judgment alone does not constitute grounds for reclassification. This constraint preserves the reference utility of the index for audit documentation purposes, where practitioners may need to establish which version of a framework was operative at a specific point in time.

The How to Use This Cybersecurity Resource page provides additional guidance on interpreting entry annotations, navigating classification boundaries, and identifying which framework tier applies to a specific organizational profile.