Here are some common questions on the Australian Cyber Security Centre’s (ACSC) Essential Eight Maturity Model.
Introspectus Assessor is a security auditing tool that focuses on an organisation’s compliance with the ACSC’s Essential Eight.
Introspectus Assessor is made up of:
Introspectus Assessor Agent has two modes of execution:
The Introspectus Assessor Agent require the following software components:
Yes, for a device to be included in the testing and reporting, the Introspectus Assessor Agent needs to be installed.
Introspectus provides the Introspectus Assessor Agent as a Microsoft MSI file that can be downloaded from the Introspectus Assessor Portal. We also provide you with sample MSI execution strings to simplify installation or to include in your organisation’s standard MSI installation product.
Yes, Introspectus Assessor is provided as a Software-as-a-Service solution.
Yes. You can download a free, limited trial version of Introspectus Assessor here . The trial version has some limited functionality but will allow you to evaluate whether this solution is of value to your organisation.
Yes. Once you register with the Introspectus Assessor Portal, you will be provided with a license key and be able to download the Introspectus Assessor Agent to install on your devices. We provide you with an MSI installation string that you can use to install the Agent, either manually or using your standard MSI installation product. Alternatively, you may choose to run the installation manually in verbose mode, where you get to review and accept each step of the installation.
Yes. Introspectus Assessor requires two-factor authentication in order to use the product. All logins to the Portal or Flight Deck need 2FA.
Introspectus Assessor uses end-to-end encryption of data. When data is transferred from the Introspectus Assessor Agent to the Introspectus Assessor Portal, it is done so using only TLS1.2 and TLS1.3.
Introspectus Assessor stores all data encrypted “at rest”.
All data is stored within Australian data centres and managed by Australian staff.
Essential Eight is a set of strategies to mitigate cyber security incidents. These eight primary mitigation strategies make it much more difficult for attackers to gain access to IT systems or processes essential to the operation of your business.
Essential Eight will help your organisation mitigate cyber security incidents caused by various cyber threats. These strategies are part of recommendations from the ACSC.
To assist organisations with their implementation of the Essential Eight, Maturity Levels have been defined based on mitigating increasing levels of adversary tradecraft (i.e, tools, tactics, techniques, and procedures) and targeting. They are designed to assist Australian organisations implement the Essential Eight in a graduated manner.
In determining the relevant Maturity Level, an organisation needs to consider:
All Australian businesses with an annual turnover of $3 million are required to report data breaches within 72 hours to affected customers and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Download a high-level managerial overview of Introspectus Assessor to share with your Manager.
A no obligation free trial of Introspectus Assessor gives insight into the capabilities and control gained from real-time reporting and technical advice to overcome any security gaps and improve your security posture.
for Windows 64bit
Each agent compares the current patch list against what is actually installed on its device. Any gap between what has been released and what is deployed is immediately surfaced. Critically, Introspectus pays particular attention to the timing of patch deployment not just whether a patch is present, but when it was applied.
This temporal dimension is central to Essential Eight compliance, where the difference between a patch applied on day two versus day thirty can mean the difference between maturity levels, and between an environment that was protected and one that was exposed.
This combination of daily patch intelligence, severity-based filtering, agent-level validation, and deployment timing analysis gives organisations a real-time, evidence-based view of their operating system patch posture mapped directly to the ISM controls applicable to the Essential Eight patch operating systems strategy.
The visibility gap here is particularly consequential. A patch may be approved and scheduled, yet never successfully applied due to a failed deployment, a device that was offline during the maintenance window, a reboot that was deferred, or a system that exists outside managed channels entirely.
Organisations that rely solely on deployment tooling to confirm patch status are measuring intent, not reality. The ACSC is explicit on this point: organisations need to confirm patches have been applied successfully, not merely that they were dispatched.
Within the Essential Eight framework, patching operating systems is a core and non-negotiable control. The ACSC sets clear expectations: patches for internet-facing infrastructure must be applied within 48 hours when identified as critical or where working exploits exist, and within two weeks for standard releases.
Patches for workstations, servers, and network devices must be applied within one month, with tighter timeframes applying in high-threat environments. Critically, the ACSC also mandates that vulnerability scanning occurs at least daily for internet-facing systems and at least fortnightly for workstations and non-internet-facing infrastructure not to replace patching, but to confirm it has actually occurred.
From this inventory, Introspectus performs targeted web intelligence gathering. For each application identified, the platform locates the top five authoritative sources of patch and release information vendor security advisories, release notes, and vulnerability databases and retrieves that content into a central repository.
Aletheia, Introspectus’s AI analysis agent, then reads and analyses this content to extract the intelligence that matters for application patching: the latest available version, whether a release addresses a security vulnerability, the severity of that vulnerability, and all information relevant to the Essential Eight application patching requirements. This structured intelligence is mapped directly to the applicable ISM controls, producing defensible, audit-ready evidence of an organisation’s application patch compliance posture.
A critical and frequently overlooked problem is the visibility gap. Organisations may believe their applications are current when, in reality, patches have silently failed, devices have missed deployment windows, or software has been installed outside of managed channels entirely.
Without continuous inspection at the endpoint level, these gaps go undetected until an audit or, worse, a breach.
Within the Essential Eight standard, patching applications is a dedicated and non-negotiable control. The ACSC specifies clear timeframes: critical vulnerabilities in internet-facing services must be addressed within 48 hours, commonly used applications such as office productivity suites, web browsers, email clients and PDF software must be patched within two weeks of release, and all other applications within one month.
For organisations in high-threat environments, the bar is higher still. Meeting these requirements consistently across hundreds of distinct applications deployed across thousands of endpoints is not achievable through manual effort alone.