Cybersecurity Templates
Most security controls fail quietly. The access review that was due in March is still open in June. The temporary firewall rule from last year’s migration is still allowing traffic. The critical vulnerability was accepted as a risk with no expiry date. Nobody decided to stop doing the work. It simply had no owner, no deadline and no record. CheckFlow’s cybersecurity templates turn recurring security operations into checklists that start on schedule. Every step goes to a named person, and every completed run is kept as dated evidence.
The templates are written for IT security leads, system administrators and the GRC owners who have to show an auditor that a control actually ran. They cover the human work around your security tools: the reviews, decisions, approvals and sign-offs that scanners, firewalls and identity platforms can’t do for you. Where a review is typically driven by a framework control, such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS or the CIS Controls, the template maps it. The framework checklists themselves live in our compliance templates.
Explore Our Cybersecurity Checklist Templates
Each template includes a detailed guide covering why the review matters, what every phase involves, who should own it and which framework controls it helps evidence. Each one also comes with a live example you can open before you sign up.
User Access Review Checklist
A periodic recertification of who can access what. It pulls user lists from your identity provider and key applications, reconciles them against HR leavers and movers, sends each system to its owner for certification and tracks every removal to a ticket. Privileged and service accounts get their own pass before the review is signed off.
Firewall Rule Review Checklist
A rule-by-rule review of your firewall policy. It exports the configuration, confirms an owner and business justification for each rule, and finds overly permissive, shadowed, redundant and unused rules from hit counts. Removals go through change control, and the rule base is signed off with evidence of what changed.
Network Security Audit Checklist
A network-layer audit, usually run once a year or after a major change. It checks diagrams and data flows against reality, then covers segmentation, perimeter controls, remote access, wireless, network device hardening and firmware, and the logging that should catch an intruder moving across the network.
Vulnerability Management Checklist
The recurring cycle from scan to verified fix. It confirms scan coverage against the asset inventory, triages findings by severity, exploitation evidence and exposure, sets remediation deadlines, and records exceptions with an owner and an expiry date. A rescan proves each fix before a finding is closed.
Penetration Test Preparation & Remediation Checklist
Everything around the test itself. It covers scope and rules of engagement, written authorisation, tester selection and notifying your hosting providers, then the report triage, remediation plan and retest that turn a PDF of findings into evidence an auditor will accept.
Cloud Security Review Checklist
A periodic posture review across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. It covers the account and subscription inventory, identity and break-glass access, public exposure, encryption and key management, audit logging and the triage of posture-management findings, with the provider’s share of the responsibility kept separate from yours.
Cybersecurity Incident Response Checklist
A security incident run from first alert to lessons learned. It covers triage and severity, containment, evidence preservation, eradication and recovery, and switches on the notification steps when personal data or a regulator is involved, so deadlines are tracked from the moment the incident is declared.
Incident Response Tabletop Exercise Checklist
Plan, run and follow up a discussion-based exercise that tests your incident response plan. It covers objectives, scenario and injects, participants and briefing, facilitation on the day, the hot wash and the after-action report, and tracks each improvement to closure before the next exercise.
Security Awareness Training Programme Checklist
The annual cycle of a security awareness programme. It starts with a needs assessment, then covers role-based content, new-joiner training, phishing simulations, completion tracking and chasing, and the metrics that show whether behaviour is actually changing, ending with a programme review for the next year.
Why Security Teams Use CheckFlow
Reviews that start themselves
Quarterly access reviews, six-monthly firewall reviews and annual exercises are scheduled once, then created and assigned automatically. A missed cycle shows up as an overdue checklist on a dashboard, not as an exception in your auditor’s report.
Evidence an auditor can follow
Every run records who completed each step and when, with the exports, tickets and screenshots attached to the task they support. When a SOC 2 or ISO 27001 auditor asks for a sample of reviews, you send completed checklists rather than rebuilding the story from email.
Around your tools, not instead of them
CheckFlow isn’t a scanner, a SIEM or an identity platform. It runs the decisions those tools can’t make: who approves an exception, which rules are removed, who signs off the review. See how that works in CheckFlow for SOC 2 and compliance checklist software.
Cybersecurity Templates — Frequently Asked Questions
Who are the cybersecurity templates for?
They are for the people who run security operations day to day: IT security leads, system and network administrators, cloud engineers, and the GRC or compliance owners who have to evidence that controls operate. They suit an in-house team at a growing company as well as a larger security function that wants the same review to run the same way every time. MSPs can use them to run the same reviews for each client.
How are these different from the compliance templates?
The compliance templates follow a framework from end to end, such as ISO 27001 or FedRAMP. The cybersecurity templates are the recurring operational reviews that those frameworks expect you to run, such as an access review, a firewall rule review or an incident response test. Each cybersecurity template maps the framework controls it helps evidence, so the two sets work together.
Will an auditor accept a completed checklist as evidence?
A completed checklist shows that the review happened, who did each step, when it was done and who signed it off, with the supporting exports and tickets attached. That is the evidence auditors typically sample for operating effectiveness. Whether it satisfies a particular control is for your auditor to judge, so agree the evidence you will provide with them before the audit period starts.
Can I change the steps and the schedule?
Every template is fully editable. Add the systems and controls that matter to you, remove the steps that don’t apply, change who owns each phase and set the frequency your policy requires. Conditional logic lets one template handle variations, such as removal steps that appear only when a reviewer rejects access, or notification steps that appear only when personal data is involved.