Quiz Entry - updated: 2026.07.14
Which guiding question does each of the five NIST CSF Functions answer?
Each Function answers one practical question about your security posture, from "what needs protection?" to "how do we restore capabilities?".
| Function | Guiding question |
|---|---|
| Identify | What processes and assets need protection? |
| Protect | What safeguards are available? |
| Detect | What techniques can identify incidents? |
| Respond | What techniques can contain the impacts of incidents? |
| Recover | What techniques can restore capabilities? |
This framing is useful in practice: when assessing an organization, you can walk through these five questions in order and immediately expose blind spots ("we have firewalls (Protect) but nobody monitoring them (Detect)").