How DayBlink Consulting aligned protection efforts by rapidly identifying and prioritizing critical assets for a large technology
Read the full case study here: Accelerating Crown Jewels Identification
Introduction
As the digital attack surface rapidly expands across apps, systems, endpoints, and cloud infrastructure, cybersecurity teams face growing pressure to safeguard what matters most. Yet, with budgets under scrutiny, organizations must be disciplined and strategic about how they allocate security investments.
While established frameworks like MITRE’s Crown Jewels Analysis offer rigor, they are often slow, resource-heavy, and complex to implement in today’s constrained environments. Many organizations lack the time, resources, and tools required to execute such heavyweight analyses leading to delayed decisions and unclear protection priorities.
To address this, DayBlink Consulting partnered with a Fortune 500 media and technology company to design and launch a light-weight rapid-fire Crown Jewels program – a leaner, pragmatic asset prioritization approach that enabled faster protection alignment, accelerated execution and a roadmap for long-term cyber maturity.
Problem
Our client struggled to effectively assess and identify their most valuable assets with limited resources and competing priorities
A large media and technology enterprise faced persistent challenges in identifying and prioritizing its most critical assets. The organization had explored traditional Crown Jewels analysis frameworks, such as MITRE’s, but quickly found them too resource-intensive to execute. These methods required deep cross-functional engagement, detailed mission to process to asset decomposition, and asset-level mapping an unrealistic lift for already constrained cybersecurity teams.
Without a formal asset prioritization model, management did not have visibility and assurance that higher value assets had higher level security controls in place and a more robust security posture.
Security teams lacked clarity on which systems warranted enhanced controls, and leadership had no consistent framework to justify investments or evaluate decisions.
Compounding the issue, the company lacked a complete and centralized asset inventory. Siloed knowledge and inconsistent documentation created multiple and conflicting sources of truth. Decision-making was slow, visibility was limited and collaboration across teams was sporadic.
Solution
DayBlink Consulting deployed a rapid-fire, configurable scoring tool to classify assets into protection tiers
DayBlink Consulting partnered with the client to implement a rapid fire Crown Jewels identification framework built for speed, adaptability and long term value. Rather than relying on exhaustive dependency mapping, which would have required significantly broader stakeholder commitment and effort, our approach focused on delivering quick, targeted impact.
A cross functional tiger team rapidly established an inventory of critical assets and applied a structured scoring algorithm. Because stakeholders already shared a reliable understanding of the organization’s most important assets, the team could move quickly without the broader commitment and effort that a full dependency mapping exercise would have required. Using criteria such as operational impact, regulatory risk, data sensitivity and system dependencies, assets were classified into protection tiers to guide investment and protection decisions, including: crown jewel, high value, moderate value and low value. To ensure confidence in the results, we incorporated executive validation checkpoints to review and approve classifications generated by the model.
The scoring framework was also designed to evolve. As new information surfaced such as changes in business priorities, asset dependencies, or the technology landscape, we adjusted scoring logic, refreshed assumptions and recalibrated weightings as needed. Quarterly refresh cycles and governance checkpoints helped keep the Crown Jewels Repository current, defensible and aligned to the organization’s shifting risk posture.
By focusing on rapid deployment and long-term sustainability, DayBlink enabled the client to operationalize its asset classification model in just a few weeks, accelerating protection planning and improving investment alignment.
Outcome
We operationalized a light-weight asset classification model that guides millions of dollars in cybersecurity protection investments
We provided the client with a fully operational Crown Jewels program, backed by clear prioritization, executive alignment and scalable governance. The structured scoring framework enabled the organization to classify hundreds of assets, resulting in an agreed-upon shortlist of Crown Jewels that anchors protection planning and risk prioritization.
The program enabled the organization to move away from ad hoc decision making by giving security teams clarity on where to focus enhanced protections and investment. Higher value assets are linked to stronger recommendations, ensuring that a larger portion of cybersecurity investment flowed to the most critical assets. This accelerated implementation, reduced guesswork, and strengthened alignment between control execution, business priorities and overall protection value.
As new assets are introduced, they are added to the inventory and prioritized using the same scoring framework. Changes in business priorities or the technology landscape are incorporated by updating assumptions and adjusting weightings. This flexibility ensures the model remains current and aligned to the organization’s evolving risk environment.
What started as a short-term acceleration effort grew into a core enterprise capability for classifying and protecting the organization’s most critical assets.