The DVMS 3D Knowledge Model: A Multidimensional Approach to Cyber Resilience
Rick Lemieux – Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of the DVMS Institute
Introduction
The Digital Value Management System® (DVMS) provides organizations with an overlay model for managing digital business risk by linking value creation and protection as inseparable activities. One of its most innovative components is the 3D Knowledge Model, a conceptual model designed to ensure that cybersecurity is not treated as a siloed technical problem but as an integrated organizational responsibility. This model emphasizes the interaction between team knowledge, collaboration, and strategic alignment, ensuring that organizations can see the “whole” system, not just isolated parts.
By embedding the 3D Knowledge Model within the DVMS overlay, organizations gain a powerful tool for achieving cyber resilience. This essay explores the model’s structure, principles, and implications, showing how it contributes to creating, protecting, and delivering digital business value in complex environments.
The Purpose of the 3D Knowledge Model
The 3D Knowledge Model is designed to uncover hidden vulnerabilities and strengthen resilience by framing team and organizational dynamics across three dimensions:
- Knowledge over Time (X-axis) – capturing lessons from the past, evaluating the present, and preparing for the future.
- Collaboration (Y-axis) – focusing on inter-team dependencies and cross-functional accountability.
- Strategic Alignment (Z-axis) – ensuring that every action contributes to the organizational mission and goals.
This multidimensional approach ensures that cybersecurity initiatives are not isolated technical fixes but embedded in the organization’s cultural, strategic, and operational fabric.
The X-Axis: Knowledge and Learning Over Time
The X-axis emphasizes the continuous learning cycle by leveraging past experiences, adapting present practices, and anticipating future challenges.
- Past: Teams must institutionalize lessons from incidents and successes to avoid repeating mistakes.
- Present: Current practices require constant evaluation to identify vulnerabilities and inefficiencies.
- Future: Teams must anticipate risks, emerging technologies, and evolving threats.
This temporal perspective ensures adaptability. For example, by analyzing a past data breach, teams can implement immediate controls while simultaneously using insights to prepare for more advanced attack vectors. The result is a proactive posture where learning is embedded into organizational routines.
The Y-Axis: Inter-Team Collaboration
The Y-axis captures how different teams interact and share knowledge. Cybersecurity failures often occur because departments operate in silos—IT may implement a control without HR understanding its role in insider threat management, or legal may overlook compliance implications of technical decisions.
The 3D Knowledge Model promotes cross-functional collaboration, where teams learn the impact of their work on others and develop mutual accountability. For instance, a vulnerability management team must understand how delayed patching impacts operations, while business units must grasp how their workflows affect overall risk posture. This cultural shift breaks down silos and fosters shared responsibility.
The Z-Axis: Strategic and Operational Alignment
The Z-axis ensures that team activities are technically sound and strategically relevant. Every cybersecurity effort must align with the organization’s mission, vision, and goals.
For example, if an organization’s mission emphasizes customer trust, its cybersecurity strategy must prioritize protecting personal data and transparent incident communication. The Z-axis ensures that security efforts advance these strategic objectives, preventing misalignment between operational activities and strategic intent.
This axis also introduces a maturity perspective: the better the alignment between operations and strategy, the more resilient and adaptive the organization becomes.
Context, Capability, and Maturity
Beyond the three axes, the 3D Knowledge Model incorporates three broader organizational dimensions:
- Context: Aligning knowledge and behavior with the organization’s unique mission, regulatory environment, and risk tolerance.
- Capability: Measuring the ability to collaborate across teams and effectively leverage resources.
- Maturity: Assessing how consistently strategic goals translate into operational execution.
These dimensions enable organizations to evolve from reactive cybersecurity measures to proactive and adaptive resilience.
Integration with the DVMS Overlay
The 3D Knowledge Model is not standalone; it integrates directly with the DVMS overlay, which itself consists of three layers:
- What the organization already does (existing frameworks, methods, and processes).
- The Z-X Model defines the seven Minimum Viable Capabilities (Govern, Assure, Plan, Design, Change, Execute, and Innovate).
- The CPD Model operationalizes the ability to create, protect, and deliver digital business value.
The 3D Knowledge Model enhances this structure by ensuring all three layers function cohesively. For example, when an organization uses the CPD Model to balance value creation with protection, the 3D Knowledge Model provides a lens for aligning knowledge (X), collaboration (Y), and strategy (Z) with those activities.
Practical Applications
Identifying Hidden Vulnerabilities
The model encourages organizations to ask better questions about their systems and assumptions. By mapping dependencies across the three axes, teams can reveal undocumented processes, cultural blind spots, and overlooked risks. For instance, asking “How does this system impact other teams?” can uncover cascading effects of a change that might otherwise remain invisible.
Cultural Integration
Cybersecurity resilience is not just technical—it requires cultural integration. The 3D Knowledge Model supports this by encouraging shared accountability, fostering a questioning culture, and embedding resilience into daily operations.
Alignment with NIST CSF 2.0
The model also aligns with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0, particularly its emphasis on governance, enterprise risk management, and outcomes. CSF’s GOVERN function naturally aligns with the Z-axis, ensuring strategic alignment, while IDENTIFY and PROTECT correspond to the knowledge and collaboration axes.
The Role of Systems Thinking
A defining characteristic of the 3D Knowledge Model is its foundation in systems thinking. By treating organizations as complex adaptive systems, the model acknowledges that no part can be improved in isolation. Instead, outcomes depend on the interactions among parts.
This holistic perspective means that cybersecurity cannot be reduced to checklists. Instead, resilience emerges from the coordinated interplay of teams, processes, and strategies across all three axes.
Benefits of the 3D Knowledge Model
The DVMS 3D Knowledge Model delivers several tangible benefits:
- Improved Awareness: Teams learn from past events while staying prepared for the future.
- Reduced Risks: Collaboration across functions prevents blind spots and reduces systemic vulnerabilities.
- Strategic Coherence: Cybersecurity efforts align with organizational goals, ensuring relevance and impact.
- Cultural Resilience: A questioning culture and leadership accountability embed security into daily routines.
- Adaptive Capacity: The model enables organizations to evolve continuously in response to dynamic threats.
Conclusion
The DVMS 3D Knowledge Model is a powerful innovation for managing digital business risk. Framing organizational behavior along the axes of knowledge, collaboration, and alignment ensures that cybersecurity is embedded in strategy, culture, and operations. Integrated into the DVMS overlay enables organizations to create, protect, and deliver digital value as concurrent, inseparable activities.
In an era of constant cyber threats and organizational complexity, the 3D Knowledge Model equips leaders and practitioners with a holistic, multidimensional lens to build resilience. By embracing this model, organizations can transform cybersecurity from a reactive technical function into a proactive driver of trust, adaptability, and long-term success.
About the Author
Rick Lemieux
Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of the DVMS Institute
Rick has 40+ years of passion and experience creating solutions to give organizations a competitive edge in their service markets. In 2015, Rick was identified as one of the top five IT Entrepreneurs in the State of Rhode Island by the TECH 10 awards for developing innovative training and mentoring solutions for boards, senior executives, and operational stakeholders.
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