In plain English
The Essential Eight is being replaced by a set of frameworks, one per environment. Essentials for Enterprise IT is the one for the office IT most businesses run, alongside separate chapters for cloud and operational technology. The controls carry across; the structure and some requirements change.
Full definition
announced in June 2026 that the would be retired in favour of the Essentials series. Rather than one universal set of eight strategies, the series is organised by domain. Essentials for Enterprise IT covers corporate workstations, servers and identity; Essentials for Cloud covers cloud services; Essentials for Operational Technology covers industrial and building control systems.
Consultation on the draft closed on 12 July 2026. As of September 2026 the final version has not been published and the Essential Eight remains the current standard. ASD's stated timeline puts deprecation of the Essential Eight at around mid-2027 and full retirement at around mid-2028, with both frameworks expected to run together through the transition.
Work done against the Essential Eight is not wasted: the Essentials series is built around the same control outcomes. The practical exposure for businesses is in contracts, tenders and insurance attestations that name a specific Essential Eight , since those clauses do not update when the framework retires.