CERT works in the areas of security process improvement and operational resiliency management and engineering. CERT has been researching and developing tools, techniques, and methods that help organizations manage operational risk and improve operational resiliency.

CERT® Resiliency Engineering Framework (REF) - is a capability model for operational resiliency management. It has two primary objectives:

* Establish the convergence of operational risk and resiliency management activities such as security, business continuity, and aspects of IT operations management, into a single model.
* Apply a process improvement approach to operational resiliency management through the definition and application of a capability level scale that expresses increasing levels of process improvement.