NIST’s new draft, Special Publication 1331, is a quick-start guide on how to use the Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0 to manage emerging cybersecurity risks. At its core, the document is about resilience. It recognizes that some risks are well known but not yet on everyone’s radar, while others are entirely new with no established mitigations. Both types can have outsized impacts, especially in today’s interconnected IT, OT, and IoT environments.

Emerging Risks in Focus

Rather than trying to catalog every possible threat, SP 1331 focuses on the processes that make organizations more adaptable. It encourages teams to treat risk management as a cycle: plan and prepare, respond and recover, and then feed the lessons back into strategy. The underlying principle is that resilience depends less on predicting every potential risk and more on developing the capacity to absorb disruptions and rapidly recover from unexpected events.

The Two Faces of Emerging Risk

NIST categorizes emerging risks into two categories. The first includes risks that are broadly recognized in the cybersecurity community but not yet identified across all organizations. Although threats like ransomware and phishing, as well as their mitigations, are widely recognized, some organizations still lack awareness. As a result, this area of the attack surface often remains insufficiently protected.

The second category includes risks that no organization can fully anticipate. Without predefined mitigation strategies, companies must rely on strong processes, governance, and resilience measures to withstand and recover from such events. As the publication emphasizes, adaptability is essential: when risks cannot be predicted, organizations need to respond quickly to reduce their impact.

The Role of the CSF 2.0 Functions

SP 1331 frames emerging risk management through the lens of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) 2.0 Functions. These Functions include Govern, Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, Recover, and Improvement, and together they organize risk management into a continuous cycle.

The first three (Govern, Identify, and Protect) focus on proactive measures, such as setting the risk management strategy and policy. The next three (Detect, Respond, and Recover) guide organizations in managing risks once they materialize, from recognizing the incident to containing its impact and restoring operations. The Improvement category ensures that lessons learned from real-world events are integrated back into governance, planning, and protection.

SP 1331 links the CSF 2.0 Functions directly to concrete practices for managing uncertainty. The guidance shows how to improve CSF Functions for emerging risks by strengthening governance, performing assessments that reveal weak points before they cause harm, and designing systems with redundancy and containment in mind. The result is a security posture that does not just wait for the next crisis but actively builds the capacity to handle whatever comes.

Practical Steps for Organizations

Building resilience against emerging risks starts with treating it as an ongoing discipline rather than a one-time project. Organizations can begin by planning for various scenarios and doing tabletop exercises to practice responding to both known and unknown risks. Another practical step is to review how incident response and recovery plans are resourced, not just whether a plan exists but whether staff, budget, and communication channels are in place to make it work under pressure. Finally, culture matters. Teams that regularly reflect on lessons learned and share them openly will be better positioned to adapt when the next surprise arrives.

Technology in Support of Resilience

Managing emerging risks is especially difficult in environments that combine information technology (IT), operational technology (OT), and internet of things (IoT) systems. Operational technology and industrial control systems (ICS) are often critical to safety and continuity, yet they can be some of the hardest assets to analyze. Blind spots in these areas create openings for threats that organizations may not anticipate. One way to close that gap is through tools that analyze software and their dependencies. When systems become clearer, organizations are better positioned to meet NIST’s guidance on adaptability and preparedness.

BinLens: Closing the Visibility Gap

ObjectSecurity’s BinLens leverages advanced symbolic execution to analyze binary software components across IT, OT, and ICS environments. By systematically exploring all possible execution paths, BinLens reveals hidden vulnerabilities, unsafe code paths, and third-party dependencies that traditional scanning often misses.

This capability gives organizations deep insight into how binaries behave under different conditions even without access to source code. With that visibility, teams can strengthen the Identify and Protect functions of the CSF 2.0 and build the resilient foundation that NIST SP 1331 emphasizes: the ability to adapt, withstand, and recover from emerging risks.

Key Takeaways for Leaders

• Resilience depends on proactively predicting threats and preparing the organization to adapt when the unexpected happens
• Governance and technical controls only work when leadership prioritizes them
• The quality of risk assessments and testing shapes how effective detection and response efforts will be
• Cybersecurity should be treated as business risk, considered alongside financial, operational, and reputational concerns
• Each incident, whether severe or minor, offers an opportunity to refine strategy and improve resilience