# SANS ## CIS Critical Security Controls: Guidelines ### Critical Controls for Effective Cyber Defense To secure against cyber attacks, organizations must vigorously defend their networks and systems from a variety of internal and external threats. They must also be prepared to detect and thwart damaging follow-on attack activities inside a network that has already been compromised. Two guiding principles are: "Prevention is ideal but detection is a must" and "Offense informs defense." ### The Goal of the Critical Controls The goal of the Critical Controls is to protect critical assets, infrastructure, and information by strengthening your organization's defensive posture through continuous, automated protection and monitoring of your sensitive information technology infrastructure to reduce compromises, minimize the need for recovery efforts, and lower associated costs. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://resources.yamaindustrials.com/sans.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.