Essential Eight Assessments and Uplift

Misconfigurations, inconsistent patching and incomplete control coverage remain some of the most common causes of compromise. The Essential Eight assessments and uplift provide a proven and prioritised set of mitigation strategies that help protect organisations from real attacks.

The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) and Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) Essential Eight gives organisations a measurable maturity scale that reflects how well their controls withstand increasingly capable adversaries.

dotSec performs independent Essential Eight maturity assessments across all four maturity levels. Our assessments identify how well your organisation meets the ASD maturity requirements, which risks remain and which improvements will deliver meaningful uplift.

What does an Essential Eight assessment and uplift provide?

dotSec will use the ASD/ACSC Essential Eight maturity model to assess your organisation against four maturity levels:

Maturity Level Zero, where controls are either absent or operating ad hoc
Maturity Level One, which focuses on baseline protections against opportunistic threats
Maturity Level Two, which defends against more capable adversaries who invest time in improving their tools
Maturity Level Three, which expects more rigorous, controlled and sustained operation of the eight mitigation strategies

Our assessments identify how well your organisation meets the ASD maturity requirements, which risks remain and which improvements will deliver meaningful uplift.

This process will realise the following benefits for your business:

Understand your current maturity.
dotSec evaluates your environment against the ASD Essential Eight maturity model. The review shows how closely your controls map to the expected behaviours and outcomes at each maturity level, from Zero to Three.
Identify practical improvement opportunities.
Our assessors highlight areas where the implementation of a control does not meet the intended maturity outcomes. Recommendations are tailored to uplift your posture in a way that makes operational and business sense.
Prioritise cyber risk reduction.
The Essential Eight is designed to reduce credible and common threats. dotSec highlights the improvements that will reduce risk quickly and effectively while preparing you for higher maturity levels.
Establish a clear baseline for stakeholders.
Your report provides an authoritative and evidence-based view of Essential Eight maturity across the organisation. This supports planning, budgeting and decision-making at all levels.

Can't I just run some kind of scanning tool?

Some providers rely entirely on automated scanning, and market that output as an Essential Eight assessment.

Automated tools are useful but they cannot evaluate policy coverage, configuration consistency, privileged access designs, operating procedures or the subtle differences between intended controls and how they function in real environments. There’s an inherent risk in environments that have passed a scan, but which are later found to fail to correctly implement the guidelines, especially when evidence, procedures and configurations were reviewed.

A proper Essential Eight maturity assessment requires document analysis, interviews, observation, sampling and validation of control operation. That is the standard that dotSec applies.

Three step model for Essential Eight improvement

Step 1: Baseline

Baseline Maturity Assessment (Levels Zero to Three)

dotSec begins with a structured, independent assessment of your current alignment with the ASD Essential Eight maturity model.

This includes evidence reviews, interviews, configuration sampling and technical analysis across selected systems, cloud services and user devices.

The objective is to determine your organisation’s maturity level for each of the eight mitigation strategies, from Level Zero through to Level Three. The assessment identifies where controls operate well, where they fall short of ASD expectations and where control design differs from actual operation.

Your baseline report provides a clear, factual and defensible view of current maturity that can be shared with IT, leadership and external stakeholders.

Step 2: Control

Control Effectiveness Verification

Once the baseline is established, dotSec verifies how effectively the in-scope controls operate day to day. This includes reviewing configuration consistency, analysing operational processes, checking evidence of repeatability, and validating that implemented controls genuinely meet the intent of ASD’s maturity level requirements.

This step highlights the difference between “controls exist on paper” and “controls operate as designed”. It also identifies systemic issues such as configuration drift, dependency on manual workarounds or gaps that automated scanning tools simply cannot detect.

Your verification report provides practical insights into which controls deliver real protection and which require redesign or improvement to reach higher maturity levels.

Step 3: Uplift

Targeted Uplift Roadmap and Implementation Support

dotSec delivers a prioritised and actionable improvement roadmap that aligns with ASD’s maturity model, your operational constraints and your risk profile. Recommendations are structured to support rapid uplift where it has the greatest effect and strategic changes where deeper improvements are required.

The roadmap outlines the steps needed to progress from current maturity to your desired maturity level. This can include improved patching cycles, configuration hardening, privileged access controls, application control policies, backup integrity processes and procedure updates.

dotSec can continue to assist by validating uplift progress, advising on control redesign and supporting ongoing improvement toward sustained Essential Eight maturity.

We stand out from other Essential Eight providers in Australia

DotSec delivers Essential Eight assessment and uplift services that are practical, evidence driven and don’t just parrot the output of some scanning tool. We stand out for several reasons:

Full-spectrum Essential Eight capability. dotSec assesses controls at every maturity level, from establishing a baseline at Level Zero to guiding organisations striving for Level Three. Our experience covers government, private sector, regulated environments and hybrid architectures.
Operational insight and real-world experience. We operate our own ISO 27001 certified ISMS, maintain PCI DSS compliance and provide active MSIEM and MDR services. Our team understands how controls behave in production, not just in audits or theory.
Independent, informed and practical. dotSec’s recommendations account for technical realities, business priorities and resource constraints. The goal is always to uplift maturity in a sustainable and measurable way.

What next?

If you want an Essential Eight maturity assessment or support uplifting controls to higher maturity levels, dotSec can help.

Each engagement is tailored to your environment, your risks and your operational goals.

OUR CYBER SERVICES

ISO 27001 consulting

Practical and experienced Australian ISO 27001 and ISMS consulting services. We will help you to establish, implement and maintain an effective information security management system (ISMS).

Penetration tests

DotSec’s penetration tests are conducted by experienced, Australian testers who understand real-world attacks and secure-system development. Clear, actionable recommendations, every time.

PCI DSS

dotSec stands out among other PCI DSS companies in Australia: We are not only a PCI QSA company, we are a PCI DSS-compliant service provider so we have first-hand compliance experience.

WAF and app-sec

Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) are critical for protecting web applications and services, by inspecting and filtering out malicious requests before they reach your web servers

Identity management

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) and Single Sign-On (SSO) reduce password risks, simplify access, letting verified and authorised users reach sensitive systems, services and apps.

Vulnerability management

dotSec provides comprehensive vulnerability management services. And we analyse findings in the context of your specific environment, priorities and threat landscape.

Phishing and soc eng

We don’t just test whether users will click a suspicious link — we also run exercises, simulating phishing attacks that are capable of bypassing multi-factor authentication (MFA) protections.

Penetration testing

DotSec’s penetration testing services help you identify and reduce technical security risks across your applications, cloud services and internal networks. Clear, actionable recommendations, every time!

Managed SOC/SIEM

dotSec has provided Australian managed SOC, SIEM and EDR services for 15 years. PCI DSS-compliant and ISO 27001-certified. Advanced log analytics, threat detection and expert investigation services.

Secure configuration

We provide prioritised, practical guidance on how to implement secure configurations properly. Choose from automated deployment via Intune for Windows, Ansible for Linux or Cloud Formation for AWS.

Secure cloud hosting

Secure web hosting is fundamental to protecting online assets and customer data. We have over a decade of AWS experience providing highly secure, scalable, and reliable cloud infrastructure.

Essential eight

DotSec helps organisations to benefit from the ACSC Essential Eight by assessing maturity levels, applying practical security controls, assessing compliance, and improving resilience against attacks.

Advisory services

We have over 25 years of cyber security experience, providing practical risk-based guidance, advisory and CISO services to a wide range of public and private organisations across Australia.