The Essential Eight is a set of eight practical mitigation strategies recommended by the ACSC to reduce the risk of common cyber threats such as ransomware, phishing, data breaches, and targeted network intrusions. These strategies were designed to be effective from multiple angles and feasible for organizations of various sizes. Each control addresses a specific aspect of cybersecurity; when implemented together, they provide a layered defense that significantly strengthens an organization’s security posture.

The Essential Eight Controls and Their Goals:

Application Control – Ensure only approved (whitelisted) applications can run on systems, preventing execution of unauthorized or malicious software. This greatly reduces the risk of malware or untrusted programs entering your network .
Patch Applications – Keep third-party software (e.g. browsers, office suites, runtimes) up to date by promptly applying security patches. This closes known vulnerabilities in applications that attackers could exploit .
Configure Microsoft Office Macro Settings – Block or tightly restrict macros in Office documents, especially those downloaded from the internet. Macros are a common malware delivery mechanism; disabling them by default or only allowing trusted macros helps ensure users don’t inadvertently run harmful code .
User Application Hardening – Harden the configuration of user applications by disabling or removing features not needed, especially those that are commonly abused. For example, turn off unsafe browser plugins (like Flash), block ads or remote code in PDF readers, and remove legacy protocols. The goal is to limit attackers’ opportunities to exploit weaknesses in user applications .
Restrict Administrative Privileges – Apply the principle of least privilege. Limit admin accounts to only those who genuinely need them and tightly control their use. By restricting admin rights, you significantly reduce the impact if a regular user account is compromised (attackers cannot easily leverage it to gain full control) . Admin accounts that do exist should be separate from standard accounts and actively monitored.
Patch Operating Systems – Just as with applications, keep operating systems (Windows, Linux, etc.) updated with the latest security patches. Ensuring OS updates are applied (especially for critical and high-risk vulnerabilities) prevents attackers from exploiting known OS flaws .
Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) – Require MFA for all users accessing important systems, especially for remote access or privileged accounts. MFA (such as a one-time code or biometric in addition to a password) helps stop adversaries who have stolen or guessed passwords from actually logging in . It adds an extra barrier that significantly improves account security.
Regular Backups – Perform regular (at least daily) backups of important data, software, and configurations, and test that you can recover from them. In the event of ransomware or data loss, reliable backups ensure you can restore systems to normal operations. Testing backups is critical to ensure the restore process works when needed .

Maturity Levels 0–3

Each Essential Eight control can be implemented at varying levels of rigor, which the ACSC defines as Maturity Levels 0 through 3. These maturity levels indicate how prepared your organization is to handle adversaries of increasing sophistication :
Maturity Level 0 – Controls are ineffective or not in place. This signifies serious weaknesses in cyber hygiene – an adversary using even basic, widely available techniques could compromise systems . (Level 0 is essentially “below the baseline”.)
Maturity Level 1 – Basic implementation. Addresses opportunistic attacks using commodity malware and known exploits. The focus at Level 1 is on basic protections to prevent attacks that require minimal attacker effort/skill (e.g. script kiddies or automated scans) . This level is recommended as a minimum for all organizations and is often the first target maturity for compliance.
Maturity Level 2 – Intermediate/Enhanced implementation. Defends against more sophisticated tradecraft than Level 1. At Level 2, attackers might invest more time in a target or use moderately advanced techniques to evade basic controls (for example, spear-phishing users or using well-known bypass methods) . The controls at this level are stronger and more consistently applied, stopping a wider range of threats.
Maturity Level 3 – Advanced implementation. Represents a robust, highly resilient posture against determined, adaptive adversaries . Level 3 is designed to mitigate advanced persistent threats (APTs) who employ sophisticated tools and novel techniques to target specific victims . An organization at Level 3 has comprehensive, tightly integrated security controls and can resist sustained attacks (though even Level 3 cannot stop the most well-resourced attackers in all cases ).

In general, organisations are advised to achieve the same maturity level across all eight controls before moving to a higher level . For example, reach Level 1 on all eight strategies, then progress to Level 2 on all, and so forth. This ensures a balanced defense – an attacker will typically target the weakest link. By using the maturity model as a roadmap, IT teams can prioritize improvements and measure their progress toward a stronger security posture.

Implementing the Essential Eight can be difficult in practice, especially for government agencies and managed service providers. Below are some key challenges these organizations face:

• Mandates and Compliance Pressure: In the public sector, E8 isn’t just guidance – it’s increasingly mandatory. For example, the NSW Cyber Security Policy requires all state agencies to achieve at least Maturity Level 1 across all eight controls . At the federal level, the government has signaled that compliance with the full Essential Eight is expected to bolster national cyber resilience . This creates pressure to meet specific maturity targets by set deadlines. Agencies must undergo audits and report their E8 maturity status annually, meaning non-compliance can result in scrutiny or penalties. MSPs that serve government clients also feel this pressure, as they may be contractually required to uphold E8 controls to protect client environments. Failure to comply can risk contract loss or legal liability.
• Complex, Legacy IT Environments: Government departments often maintain large, heterogeneous IT environments with legacy systems, proprietary applications, and outdated hardware. Such complexity makes it hard to uniformly implement controls like application allow-listing or timely patching. Legacy software might not support modern security features (e.g. enforcing MFA or disabling macros), yet cannot be easily replaced due to operational needs. Similarly, MSPs manage multiple client networks, each with different architectures and legacy issues. Ensuring Essential Eight controls are applied consistently across this diverse landscape is challenging. Custom configurations and one-off exceptions abound, which can create gaps in the security baseline. Without careful management, an MSP or agency could have certain business units or client sites well-protected while others remain at Level 0 due to legacy constraints.
• Resource and Skill Constraints: Another major challenge is the limited cybersecurity personnel and resources in many public sector organizations. Government IT teams are often small and stretched thin, making it difficult to continuously monitor compliance (e.g. checking every machine’s patch status weekly) or respond rapidly to new threats. Skilled security professionals are in high demand, and public sector salaries can make it hard to attract/retain talent. MSPs, on the other hand, might have security expertise but must spread their team across many clients, which limits the time spent on each client’s security maintenance. Both face the risk of “framework fatigue,” where keeping up with Essential Eight (and other frameworks) becomes a full-time job in itself. In practice, without automation, teams resort to labor-intensive processes (spreadsheets, manual audits) that are error-prone and hard to scale.
• Visibility Gaps and Asset Management: A foundational challenge for both government and MSPs is simply knowing what you have. It’s impossible to secure or patch devices you don’t know about. Many organizations lack a complete, up-to-date asset inventory – shadow IT systems, forgotten laptops, or new IoT devices can fall through the cracks. This undermines several E8 controls (application control, patching, etc.). Manually maintaining asset lists via spreadsheets or periodic audits often leaves gaps. One agency noted that closing compliance gaps used to take weeks of chasing spreadsheets and still missed things . Without continuous visibility, an organization might think it has patched all systems or removed admin rights, only to be blind-sided by an untracked device or account. This is especially tricky for MSPs juggling many client networks; keeping comprehensive visibility in each environment is a tall order without centralized tools.
• Maintaining Continuous Compliance: Achieving E8 compliance once is not enough – the real difficulty lies in sustaining it. Systems are dynamic: new vulnerabilities emerge monthly, users install software or change settings, staff turnover leads to permission changes, and so on. In a government setting, an agency might reach Maturity Level 1 this year, but without ongoing effort could slip back as new gaps appear (e.g. a critical patch is missed on a new server). Essential Eight requires continuous enforcement: patching within specified time frames, ensuring macros stay disabled, verifying backups run every day, etc. For MSPs, the challenge multiplies across clients: they must keep every customer’s systems in compliance, every day. This is difficult without automation and centralized monitoring. The need to detect drift (when a system falls out of compliance) and remediate quickly is paramount. Many organizations struggle here – they might perform well in a one-time assessment, but day-to-day drift leads to non-compliance by the next review . Building processes and procuring tools that enable continuous compliance is a significant hurdle.
• Balancing Security with Usability: Both government IT departments and MSPs must implement the Essential Eight in a way that doesn’t disrupt business operations. Controls like application whitelisting or disabling Office macros can generate user pushback or productivity hits if done bluntly. Agencies face internal resistance if security measures impede business workflows (for instance, an analyst needing a macro-enabled spreadsheet). MSPs similarly must balance client user experience with security – if their security service is too restrictive, clients may complain. Thus, the challenge is finding solutions that harmonize with existing workflows: e.g. phasing in application control gradually, using technology to automate exceptions, and educating users to reduce frustration. This cultural and operational aspect can be as challenging as the technical implementation.

In summary, public sector organizations and MSPs have strong incentives to adopt the Essential Eight, but they encounter significant obstacles around complexity, resource constraints, visibility, and maintenance. Overcoming these challenges requires smart planning and the help of automated, integrated tools – which is where FirstWave’s solution is targeted. The next sections will describe FirstWave’s layered defense approach and how its capabilities directly address these pain points, enabling government and MSP customers to achieve and sustain Essential Eight compliance more easily.

Struggling with APRA CPS 230? Get practical insights on asset discovery, risk monitoring, and third-party governance to meet resilience requirements.

In Australia, APRA’s CPS 230 Operational Risk Management standard came into force on 1 July 2025, replacing five existing outsourcing and business continuity standards and representing a fundamental shift toward real operational resilience for Australian financial institutions. It pulls outsourcing, business continuity, and operational risk into one simple question: Can your critical operations survive severe but plausible disruption?

That includes outages in your IT environment, problems with service providers, and unplanned changes to infrastructure. For those of us responsible for keeping systems running, CPS 230 means better visibility, stronger service provider governance, and faster response when things go wrong.

While this article focuses on APRA’s CPS 230, similar operational resilience requirements are emerging globally – from the UK’s PRA operational resilience rules to the EU’s Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA). The same foundational principles of asset visibility, automated response, and service provider oversight apply regardless of your regulatory framework.

What this means in practice

Know what you have and its health

You can’t manage what you can’t see.

CPS 230 expects a clear picture of your IT capability and asset health.

Open-AudIT automatically discovers and inventories every device on your network – servers, workstations, and network gear – so you know what’s out there, how it is configured, and how old it is.

Combined with OpConfig, you can track changes and baseline configurations, spotting unauthorized or unexpected updates before they cause downtime.

Stronger service provider oversight

Many environments rely on outsourced IT teams, third-party integrators, or managed service providers. CPS 230 requires a clear understanding of who accesses what systems and establishes recovery processes when service providers face challenges. The standard’s emphasis on “Enhanced Third-Party Risk Management” makes robust service provider oversight a core requirement.

With OpCharts, you can create service provider portals – letting external teams monitor and manage only the devices and infrastructure you authorize. This gives you vendor transparency while keeping control of your environment, supporting the contractual obligations CPS 230 expects.

Operational risk monitoring and rapid response

Detecting problems early and knowing how to respond is critical to resilience. As highlighted in KPMG’s analysis of CPS 230, the standard “underpins CPS 220 Risk Management” and requires organizations to demonstrate they can maintain critical operations under stress.

OpEvents and the OpHA Message Bus provide real time event handling, alerting you to issues as they happen and triggering automated workflows. Virtual operators can even take first line remediation steps, from restarting services to applying known fixes, before humans get involved.

Incident readiness and automated recovery

CPS 230 asks: What happens if a critical system fails? Can you get back up within tolerance? The combination of OpEvents for detection and OpConfig for rapid rollback or configuration redeployment means you’re ready to restore services fast. Automatic reporting and audit trails make post incident reviews easier and give your board the evidence it needs for APRA reporting.

Extending resilience with network and security controls

While asset visibility and automated remediation form the foundation, CPS 230 also calls for preventive and continuity controls across core IT services. This aligns with the standard’s integration with CPS 234 Information Security requirements, where cyber resilience becomes a compliance imperative.

This is where FirstWave’s wider security suite comes in:

Secure Traffic Manager provides load balancing, failover, and secure application delivery, ensuring critical business services stay online even under load or infrastructure disruption.

CyberCision Email Security keeps communications resilient by blocking malicious and unwanted email threats that can disrupt business operations or trigger incidents.

CyberCision Web and Firewall Security protects critical systems and data from external attacks, ensuring network integrity and supporting continuous, secure service delivery.

These solutions address the standard’s emphasis on incident prevention, rapid response, and operational continuity, especially in scenarios involving third parties or cloud-hosted services.

Getting started

Complete visibility enables effective security and management. Discovering and baselining your environment provides the foundation for CPS 230 resilience.

Download Open-AudIT and start identifying every device connected to your network. From there, you can build baselines, strengthen vendor oversight, and layer in monitoring, automation, and security – everything you need to meet CPS 230 requirements and build confidence in your operational resilience.

NMIS (Network Management Information System) is open source, it’s free, and it’s powerful enough to handle the majority of day-to-day network management tasks for most organizations. That’s a fact.

That means you can get real visibility and control without a commercial price tag. And when the time comes that you need more—things like compliance auditing, advanced visualization, or automation—you don’t have to start over. Plug our modules directly into NMIS, so you can build on what you already have.

That’s kind of the philosophy behind NMIS: give you a strong, capable foundation from day one, it’s basic but powerful and when set up correctly can truly be the workhorse to help you tame the network.

More Than Enough for Most Organizations

Across thousands of deployments, NMIS9 consistently covers more than 80% of what most organizations need. Out of the box, you’ll find performance monitoring, fault management, configuration visibility, and reporting that stack up against many commercial platforms.

For a lot of teams, NMIS alone is more than enough. And because it’s open source, there are no license restrictions, hidden costs, or artificial limits on scaling. Monitor as much as you need, on your terms.

Built to Work With Any Device

Networks aren’t uniform. And in today’s networks, that we see that can’t be any truer. A kaleidoscope of routers, switches, firewalls, servers, wireless controllers, cloud(s) platforms, and more. NMIS is designed to work across that diversity.

Its adaptable data model and extensive device library mean it can talk to just about anything on your network—regardless of vendor. Instead of juggling multiple tools, NMIS gives you one central platform that sees the whole picture.

Real Data, Real Insight

Knowing whether a device is up or down is the bare minimum. NMIS goes deeper, pulling in detailed metrics and turning them into insights you can act on.

With configurable thresholds and trend analysis, NMIS helps you identify issues early, optimize performance, and avoid outages. It’s the kind of visibility that makes network operations easier and decision-making sharper.

Growing With You

We maintain NMIS open source for the global networking community. We keep it updated, add support for new devices, and help organizations get the most out of their deployments.

And when you need more, our modules are ready to extend NMIS even further. Each one integrates directly into your NMIS environment:

• opEvents – powerful event and alert management to streamline troubleshooting and response.

• opConfig – configuration monitoring and compliance, helping you stay on top of changes across your network.

• opCharts – rich data visualization and custom dashboards, making complex information easy to understand and act on.

Together, these modules bring enterprise-grade capabilities while letting you keep NMIS as the foundation. You only add what you need, when you need it—without disrupting what’s already working.

Why Free Matters

In a market crowded with expensive solutions, NMIS proves that free doesn’t mean limited. It means accessible, adaptable, and supported by a community—and by us at FirstWave.

A truly free Network Management Information System exists. And it’s ready to run on your network today.

If you’ve ever had a user call in and say “I can’t connect, but the guy next to me can”, you already know the frustration of a duplicate IP address. It’s one of those problems that seems minor until it hits a critical server, a printer fleet, or worse, your DHCP infrastructure—and suddenly half the office is offline.

Duplicate IP conflicts are sneaky. They’re not a glamorous cyberattack or a dramatic hardware failure. They’re usually caused by something small—a mis-configured static IP, overlapping DHCP scopes, or an IoT device that didn’t release its lease. But the impact? Hours of downtime, productivity lost, security gaps, and a lot of hair-pulling while you hunt through logs.

That’s why serious network teams rely on a duplicate IP scanner. Think of it as an early-warning system that flags conflicts before they escalate, so you spend less time firefighting and more time keeping the business running. (Which is precisely what FirstWave excels in!)

Why Duplicate IPs Happen (and Why They’re Worse Now)

In the past, when your network was a handful of switches, a DHCP server, and some desktops, duplicate IPs were manageable. Today? Networks look like patchworks:

• Hybrid environments mix on-premises, multi-cloud, and remote access.

• IoT and BYOD are adding thousands of devices with varying behaviors.

• Virtual machines and containers are spinning up and down faster than DHCP can blink.

All of these make duplicate IPs less of an “if” and more of a “when.” And when they happen, they don’t just knock one laptop offline—they can knock out:

• A payroll server during end-of-month.

• A VoIP system in the middle of client calls.

• A VPN gateway that remote staff rely on.

The cost isn’t just downtime—it’s lost trust from your users, unnecessary overtime for IT, and potential compliance violations if service availability is mandated.

How a Duplicate IP Scanner Actually Helps

Yes, you could manually check ARP tables, log into switches, or walk the floor with a packet sniffer. But those methods don’t scale.

A duplicate IP scanner automates this grunt work:

1. Scans your ranges to see who’s alive and what IP they claim.

2. Flags conflicts in real time—before users start raising tickets.

3. Ties into your DHCP/DNS/IPAM stack, so you’re not just reacting, you’re fixing.

It’s the difference between waiting for smoke to set off the fire alarm vs. having sensors that detect a spark before it catches.

Features That Actually Matter

Many tools claim to scan for duplicate IP addresses, but what makes them usable in a real operational environment, you ask? That’s why you want to ensure that when you’re looking at software, you check off these big-ticket items. They should, at a minimum, provide you with these fundamentals; otherwise, you should probably move on.

• Real-time alerts you can act on (email, syslog, dashboard)—not just a static report.

• Automated network mapping so you can see conflicts across subnets.

• Integration with DHCP/DNS/IPAM for automated remediation.

• Scalability—can it handle 200 devices, or 200,000?

• Audit-ready reporting for when management asks, “Why did we go down last week?”

If a scanner doesn’t check those boxes, it’s probably just another tool that clogs your toolkit instead of helping.

The Payoff for Network Teams

Here’s the real-world upside you get from deploying a duplicate IP scanner:

• Less downtime: Conflicts are caught before they cascade into outages.

• Faster troubleshooting: No more ghost hunts across VLANs.

• Cleaner compliance posture: Easier reporting for ISO, PCI, HIPAA, or SOC audits.

• Better resource use: Free up hours of IT time that can go into projects instead of firefights.

Most importantly—it buys you credibility with your users. When they stop experiencing random connectivity blackouts, they notice.

Best Practices from the Field

A scanner is only as good as the way you use it. To get maximum ROI:

• Schedule recurring scans or enable continuous monitoring. Conflicts don’t happen on a schedule.

• Integrate with your existing stack—whether that’s SolarWinds, Open-AudIT, OPConfig, or custom scripts.

• Baseline your network so you know what “healthy” looks like. That way, when duplicates pop up, they stand out.

• Train your team—ensure the help desk knows how to escalate when an alert is received.

Why opAddress Stands Out

Plenty of tools can ping a subnet. But opAddress goes further because it’s not just a duplicate IP scanner—it’s a full IP address management (IPAM) platform.

With opAddress you get:

• Track duplicate IP detection with real-time alerts.

• Automated network mapping that gives you visibility across subnets.

• Tight integration with Open-AudIT and opConfig for a complete compliance and configuration picture.

• Enterprise scalability that works in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

• Audit-ready reporting out of the box.

That means you’re not just spotting conflicts—you’re preventing them from happening again, because you finally have a single source of truth for IP address allocation.

Duplicate IP conflicts are one of those “small” problems that can bring entire networks to a halt. And they’re only getting more common as networks grow more complex (Thank Big AI for that).

A duplicate IP scanner isn’t a nice-to-have anymore. It’s table stakes for modern network management.

If you want to avoid conflicts instead of cleaning up after them, it’s time to put a purpose-built tool in place.

👉 See how opAddress can eliminate duplicate IP headaches before they hit your users.

Exciting news from your local traffic management Evangelist!

STM has a revamped UIX with a whole new look, feel, and has added some new features.

Pages are now more open, less cluttered, with easier access to the features you want. And most importantly for the NOC operators, we have added Dark Mode. Feel free to give it a try by upgrading to the latest STM version 8.0.1 b12752.

The new interface can be accessed by using port 5001 or 5030 in your browser. The classic interface remains untouched at port 5000.

STM Dashboard

Before (Classic Interface)

After (Revamped Interface)

STM Overview

Before (Classic Overview)

After (Revamped Overview)