Incident Response Management
Establish a program to develop and maintain an incident response capability (e.g., policies, plans, procedures, defined roles, training, and communications) to prepare, detect, and quickly respond
to an attack.
Security Domain
CIS Control 17 – Incident Response Management
NIST CSF – Response: Incident Management (RS.MA), Incident Analysis (RS.AN), Incident Response Reporting and Communication (RS.CO), Incident Management (RS.MI)
NIST 800-53 – Incident Response
Why is Incident Response Management Important?
A comprehensive cybersecurity program must include not just protection and detection, but also strong response and recovery capabilities, areas often neglected in less mature organizations. Many enterprises rely on simply re-imaging compromised systems without fully investigating incidents, leading to a cycle of repeated attacks. Effective incident response aims to identify, contain, and remediate threats before they cause significant harm, and requires understanding how incidents occur to prevent recurrence. Since no defense is foolproof, having a documented incident response plan is essential to guide investigation, reporting, legal, and communication processes. Communication with stakeholders is especially important, as leadership needs to understand potential business impacts, such as regulatory, contractual, or revenue-related consequences, in order to prioritize recovery efforts. Long attacker dwell times increase the risk of deeper compromise and data theft, especially with the rise of ransomware, making timely detection and response critical to limiting damage.
What can you do?
Incident Response is the collective effort taken by an organization to minimize damage, reduce downtime, and restore normal operations as quickly as possible after an incident occurs. Overall, this works to help create, provision and operate an organization’s incident response capability. NCDPI divides this process into 2 pieces to better understand the required actions and responsibilities: Incident Response Capability Planning and Incident Response Handling.
Even if an PSU lacks internal resources for incident response, having a documented plan is essential. This plan should outline existing protection and detection tools, identify who to contact for assistance, and detail communication strategies for informing leadership, employees, regulators, partners, and customers. Once procedures are defined, the incident response team, or an external provider, should conduct regular scenario-based training tailored to the specific threats the enterprise faces. These exercises clarify roles, reveal process gaps or overlooked dependencies, and help improve preparedness. In more mature organizations, incorporating threat intelligence and threat hunting enhances the response process by proactively identifying likely attackers, monitoring their tactics, and refining detection and remediation efforts.
Specific details and procedures are outlined in the K-12 Cybersecurity CORE Safeguards.
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