NSA funds development, release of D3FEND, a cybersecurity framework

D3FEND, a framework for cybersecurity professionals to tailor defenses against specific cyber threats is now available through MITRE. The National Security Agency (NSA) funded MITRE’s research for D3FEND to improve the cybersecurity of National Security Systems, the Department of Defense, and the Defense Industrial Base. The D3FEND technical knowledge base of defensive countermeasures for common offensive techniques is complementary to MITRE’s ATT&CK, a knowledge base of cyber adversary behavior.

D3FEND establishes terminology of computer network defensive techniques and illuminates previously-unspecified relationships between defensive and offensive methods. This framework illustrates the complex interplay between computer network architectures, threats, and cyber countermeasures.