IR-04 Incident Handling
Incident Response
Description
a. Implement an incident handling capability for incidents that is consistent with the incident response plan and includes preparation, detection and analysis, containment, eradication, and recovery; b. Coordinate incident handling activities with contingency planning activities; c. Incorporate lessons learned from ongoing incident handling activities into incident response procedures, training, and testing, and implement the resulting changes accordingly; and d. Ensure the rigor, intensity, scope, and results of incident handling activities are comparable and predictable across the organization.
Supplemental Guidance
Organizations recognize that incident response capabilities are dependent on the capabilities of organizational systems and the mission and business processes being supported by those systems. Organizations consider incident response as part of the definition, design, and development of mission and business processes and systems. Incident-related information can be obtained from a variety of sources, including audit monitoring, physical access monitoring, and network monitoring; user or administrator reports; and reported supply chain events. An effective incident handling capability includes coordination among many organizational entities (e.g., mission or business owners, system owners, authorizing officials, human resources offices, physical security offices, personnel security offices, legal departments, risk executive [function], operations personnel, procurement offices). Suspected security incidents include the receipt of suspicious email communications that can contain malicious code. Suspected supply chain incidents include the insertion of counterfeit hardware or malicious code into organizational systems or system components. For federal agencies, an incident that involves personally identifiable information is considered a breach. A breach results in unauthorized disclosure, the loss of control, unauthorized acquisition, compromise, or a similar occurrence where a person other than an authorized user accesses or potentially accesses personally identifiable information or an authorized user accesses or potentially accesses such information for other than authorized purposes.
Changes from Rev 4
Modifies text from ‘security incidents’ to more general ‘incidents’ Adds text to ensure the rigor, intensity, scope, and results of incident handling activities are comparable and predictable across the organization Discussion expanded to explain that for federal agencies, an incident that involves PII is considered a breach
Enhancements (15)
What NIST adds to this control. Select one to read its statement.
IR-04(01) Automated Incident Handling Processes ModerateHigh
Support the incident handling process using [Assignment: organization-defined automated mechanisms].
IR-04(02) Dynamic Reconfiguration
Include the following types of dynamic reconfiguration for [Assignment: organization-defined system components] as part of the incident response capability: [Assignment: organization-defined types of dynamic reconfiguration].
IR-04(03) Continuity of Operations
Identify [Assignment: organization-defined classes of incidents] and take the following actions in response to those incidents to ensure continuation of organizational mission and business functions: [Assignment: organization-defined actions to take in response to classes of incidents].
IR-04(04) Information Correlation High
Correlate incident information and individual incident responses to achieve an organization-wide perspective on incident awareness and response.
IR-04(05) Automatic Disabling of System
Implement a configurable capability to automatically disable the system if [Assignment: organization-defined security violations] are detected.
IR-04(06) Insider Threats
Implement an incident handling capability for incidents involving insider threats.
IR-04(07) Insider Threats — Intra-organization Coordination
Coordinate an incident handling capability for insider threats that includes the following organizational entities [Assignment: organization-defined entities].
IR-04(08) Correlation with External Organizations
Coordinate with [Assignment: organization-defined external organizations] to correlate and share [Assignment: organization-defined incident information] to achieve a cross-organization perspective on incident awareness and more effective incident responses.
IR-04(09) Dynamic Response Capability
Employ [Assignment: organization-defined dynamic response capabilities] to respond to incidents.
IR-04(10) Supply Chain Coordination
Coordinate incident handling activities involving supply chain events with other organizations involved in the supply chain.
IR-04(11) Integrated Incident Response Team High
Establish and maintain an integrated incident response team that can be deployed to any location identified by the organization in [Assignment: organization-defined time period].
IR-04(12) Malicious Code and Forensic Analysis
Analyze malicious code and/or other residual artifacts remaining in the system after the incident.
IR-04(13) Behavior Analysis
Analyze anomalous or suspected adversarial behavior in or related to [Assignment: organization-defined environments or resources].
IR-04(14) Security Operations Center
Establish and maintain a security operations center.
IR-04(15) Public Relations and Reputation Repair
a. Manage public relations associated with an incident; and b. Employ measures to repair the reputation of the organization.
Patterns that use this control (27)
Grouped by the emphasis each pattern gives it.
Critical (6)
Important (19)
- SP-001 Client Module
- SP-002 Server Module
- SP-006 Wireless- Private Network Pattern
- SP-007 Wireless- Public Hotspot Pattern
- SP-008 Public Web Server Pattern
- SP-017 Secure Network Zone Module
- SP-021 Realtime Collaboration Pattern
- SP-023 Industrial Control Systems
- SP-027 Secure LLM Usage
- SP-029 Zero Trust Architecture
- SP-030 API Security
- SP-034 Cyber Resilience
- SP-035 Offensive Security Testing
- SP-037 Privileged User Management
- SP-043 Security Metrics and Measurement
- SP-046 External Attack Surface Management
- SP-048 Offensive AI and Deepfake Defence (draft)
- SP-052 Decentralised Identity & Verifiable Credentials (draft)
- SP-053 Zero-Knowledge Proof Architecture (draft)