The Center for Internet Security (CIS) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, formed in October, 2000. Its mission is to “identify, develop, validate, promote, and sustain best practice solutions for cyber defense and build and lead communities to enable an environment of trust in cyberspace”. The organization is headquartered in East Greenbush, New York, with members including large corporations, government agencies, and academic institutions.
CIS employs a closed crowdsourcing model to identify and refine effective security measures, with individuals developing recommendations that are shared with the community for evaluation through a consensus decision-making process. At the national and international level, CIS plays an important role in forming security policies and decisions by maintaining the CIS Controls and CIS Benchmarks, and hosting the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC).