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Inside Privacy: NIST Publishes Preliminary Draft of Cybersecurity Framework Profile for AI
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This is a legal/policy blog summary of NIST IR 8596, a U.S. government framework for managing AI-related cybersecurity risks; relevant for practitioners tracking regulatory and standards developments around AI deployment security.
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Summary
NIST released a preliminary draft of the Cybersecurity Framework Profile for AI (NIST IR 8596) on December 16, 2025, building on CSF 2.0 to address AI-related cybersecurity risks. The Profile introduces three Focus Areas—Secure, Defend, and Thwart—to help organizations manage cybersecurity risks from AI integration, leverage AI to enhance cyber defenses, and build resilience against AI-enabled threats like deepfakes and spear-phishing. Public comment was open until January 30, 2026.
Key Points
- •NIST IR 8596 overlays three AI Focus Areas (Secure, Defend, Thwart) on top of the existing CSF 2.0 framework's six functions: Govern, Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond, and Recover.
- •The 'Secure' focus area addresses cybersecurity challenges when organizations integrate AI; 'Defend' leverages AI to enhance cyber capabilities; 'Thwart' builds resilience against AI-enabled attacks.
- •The Profile is voluntary and flexible, designed to complement existing frameworks for organizations with both mature and nascent cybersecurity programs.
- •AI-enabled threats highlighted include deepfake-assisted spear-phishing, generative AI manipulation, and adversarial attacks requiring updated personnel training and automated defenses.
- •NIST hosted a workshop on January 14, 2026 and accepted public comments until January 30, 2026 on this preliminary draft.
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| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| NIST and AI Safety | Organization | 63.0 |
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On December 16, 2025, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (“NIST”) published a preliminary draft of the [Cybersecurity Framework Profile for Artificial Intelligence](https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/ir/2025/NIST.IR.8596.iprd.pdf) (“Cyber AI Profile” or “Profile”). According to the draft, the Cyber AI Profile is intended to “provide guidelines for managing cybersecurity risk related to AI systems \[and\] identify\[\] opportunities for using AI to enhance cybersecurity capabilities.” The draft Profile uses the existing voluntary NIST [Cybersecurity Framework (“CSF”) 2.0](https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/CSWP/NIST.CSWP.29.pdf) — which “provides guidance to industry, government agencies, and other organizations to manage cybersecurity risks” — and overlays three AI Focus Areas (Secure, Detect, Thwart) on top of the CSF’s outcomes (Functions, Categories, and Subcategories) to suggest considerations for organizations to prioritize when securing AI implementations, using AI to enhance cybersecurity defenses, or defending against adversarial uses of AI. This draft guidance will likely be familiar to organizations that already leverage the CSF 2.0 in their cybersecurity programs and might be complimentary to existing frameworks that organizations already have in place. Even so, the outcomes are designed to be flexible such that a range of organizations (with mature or novel programs) can leverage the guidance to help manage AI-related cybersecurity risk.
For entities or stakeholders that might be interested in offering feedback on the preliminary draft, NIST is planning to host a workshop on January 14, 2026, to discuss the draft. The Profile is also open for comment until January 30, 2026. Below, we briefly summarize the Profile’s organizational structure, as well as areas on which NIST is seeking public comment.
**Focus Areas**
The Cyber AI Profile is organized into three Focus Areas that address AI-related cybersecurity risk from different but overlapping angles.
- **Secure**– “\[F\]ocuses on managing cybersecurity challenges when” organizations integrate an AI system into their environment. Examples of the use of AI that fall within the scope of Secure include the use of AI by “\[p\]ower grids to balance loads” and “\[c\]ustomer service organizations to perform initial interactions with customers.”
- **Defend**– Aims to identify opportunities for the uses of AI that support cybersecurity processes and activities. For example, AI can enhance cyber defense capabilities related to mission assurance, proactive risk management, predictive maintenance and risk forecasting, “\[a\]dvanced threat detection and analysis,” adversarial training and simulation, and automated incident response.
- **Thwart** – Emphasizes building resi
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