LAYER 1 — INNERMOST
Data
Your crown jewels — the assets attackers ultimately want. Customer records, intellectual property, financial information, trade secrets. Layer 1 focuses on protecting data itself with encryption, access controls, and monitoring, regardless of where it resides.
Key Controls: Encryption at rest & in transit, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), File Integrity Monitoring, Access controls, Data classification, Database security
LAYER 2
Infrastructure
The systems and networks that house and transport your data. Servers, networks, cloud platforms, endpoints — the technical foundation of your environment. This layer protects the infrastructure through hardening, segmentation, and defensive controls.
Key Controls: Firewalls, IDS/IPS, EDR, Network segmentation, Secure configuration, Endpoint protection, Cloud security
LAYER 3
Identity
The users and credentials that access your systems. In modern architectures, identity IS the perimeter. This layer ensures only authorized users and systems can access resources, with strong authentication and access governance.
Key Controls: Identity & Access Management (IAM), Single Sign-On (SSO), Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA), Privileged Access Management (PAM), Directory services
LAYER 4
Security Operations
The capability to monitor, detect, and respond to threats. Your security team's eyes and ears — collecting telemetry, correlating events, hunting threats, and responding to incidents before they become breaches.
Key Controls: SIEM, SOAR, Threat intelligence, Security monitoring, Incident response, Threat hunting, Alert management
LAYER 5
Resilience
The ability to survive and recover from incidents. When prevention fails — and it eventually will — this layer ensures your organization can continue operations, recover data, and restore services with minimal impact.
Key Controls: Backup & recovery, Disaster recovery, Business continuity, High availability, Incident recovery procedures, Crisis management
LAYER 6 — OUTERMOST
Testing & Validation
The proactive layer that validates all other defenses work. Rather than waiting for attackers to find weaknesses, this layer continuously tests controls, identifies gaps, and proves your security posture is effective.
Key Controls: Penetration testing, Configuration auditing, Red team exercises, Breach Attack Simulation (BAS), Security audits