April 16, 2018 Cybersecurity Framework Version 1.1 Subcategories to account for unique organizational risks. The organization may also consider influences and requirements of external stakeholders such as sector entities, customers, and business partners when creating a Target Profile. The Target Profile should appropriately reflect criteria within the target Implementation Tier. Step 6: Determine, Analyze, and Prioritize Gaps. The organization compares the Current Profile and the Target Profile to determine gaps. Next, it creates a prioritized action plan to address gaps – reflecting mission drivers, costs and benefits, and risks – to achieve the outcomes in the Target Profile. The organization then determines resources, including funding and workforce, necessary to address the gaps. Using Profiles in this manner encourages the organization to make informed decisions about cybersecurity activities, supports risk management, and enables the organization to perform cost-effective, targeted improvements. Step 7: Implement Action Plan. The organization determines which actions to take to address the gaps, if any, identified in the previous step and then adjusts its current cybersecurity practices in order to achieve the Target Profile. For further guidance, the Framework identifies example Informative References regarding the Categories and Subcategories, but organizations should determine which standards, guidelines, and practices, including those that are sector specific, work best for their needs. An organization repeats the steps as needed to continuously assess and improve its cybersecurity. For instance, organizations may find that more frequent repetition of the orient step improves the quality of risk assessments. Furthermore, organizations may monitor progress through iterative updates to the Current Profile, subsequently comparing the Current Profile to the Target Profile. Organizations may also use this process to align their cybersecurity program with their desired Framework Implementation Tier. 3.3 Communicating Cybersecurity Requirements with Stakeholders The Framework provides a common language to communicate requirements among interdependent stakeholders responsible for the delivery of essential critical infrastructure products and services. Examples include:      An organization may use a Target Profile to express cybersecurity risk management requirements to an external service provider (e.g., a cloud provider to which it is exporting data). An organization may express its cybersecurity state through a Current Profile to report results or to compare with acquisition requirements. A critical infrastructure owner/operator, having identified an external partner on whom that infrastructure depends, may use a Target Profile to convey required Categories and Subcategories. A critical infrastructure sector may establish a Target Profile that can be used among its constituents as an initial baseline Profile to build their tailored Target Profiles. An organization can better manage cybersecurity risk among stakeholders by assessing their position in the critical infrastructure and the broader digital economy using Implementation Tiers. Communication is especially important among stakeholders up and down supply chains. Supply chains are complex, globally distributed, and interconnected sets of resources and processes This publication is available free of charge from: https://doi.org/10.6028/NIST.CSWP.04162018 15