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KSI-INR-RIRReviewing Incident Response Procedures

LOW
MODERATE

Formerly KSI-INR-01

>Control Description

Persistently review the effectiveness of documented incident response procedures.
Defined terms:
Incident
Persistently
Vulnerability Response

>NIST 800-53 Controls

>Trust Center Components
3

Ways to express your implementation of this indicator — approaches vary by organization size, complexity, and data sensitivity.

From the field: Mature implementations express detection and response capability through MTTD/MTTR dashboards — SIEM/SOAR platforms feeding metrics continuously, incident volumes tracked by severity and category, and false positive rates showing tuning effectiveness. Detection and response maturity becomes a visible, measurable property.

Incident Response Metrics

Dashboards

Dashboard expressing detection and response capability — MTTD, MTTR, incident volumes by severity, and resolution trends

Automated: SIEM/SOAR APIs verify incident detection and resolution timestamps

Incident Classification Framework

Processes & Procedures

How incidents are classified — severity levels, response requirements, and escalation criteria

IR Capability Certifications

Certifications & Badges

Team certifications and third-party IR retainer agreements — external validation of response capability

>Programmatic Queries

Beta
CI/CD

CLI Commands

Check for IR documentation
gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/contents/docs/incident-response --jq '.[].name'
View IR runbook contents
gh api repos/{owner}/{repo}/contents/docs/incident-response/runbook.md --jq '.content' | base64 -d | head -40

>20x Assessment Focus Areas

Aligned with FedRAMP 20x Phase Two assessment methodology

Completeness & Coverage:

  • Do your incident response procedures cover all incident types — data breaches, ransomware, insider threats, supply chain compromise, cloud provider incidents, and availability events?
  • Are procedures defined for all phases — preparation, detection/analysis, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident activity?
  • How do you ensure procedures address FedRAMP-specific requirements (ICP notification timelines, agency communication, evidence preservation for federal data)?
  • Are there incident scenarios not covered by current procedures, and how are those gaps identified and tracked?

Automation & Validation:

  • What SOAR or automation assists responders during incidents — automated evidence collection, containment playbooks, or enrichment of alerts?
  • How do you measure procedure effectiveness through quantitative metrics (MTTD, MTTR, containment time, recurrence rate)?
  • What happens when a procedure is followed but the incident is not effectively contained — how do you detect procedure failure versus execution failure?
  • Do you run tabletop exercises, purple team engagements, or adversary simulations that test procedure effectiveness under realistic conditions?

Inventory & Integration:

  • What incident response platform (PagerDuty, Jira, ServiceNow, Rootly) orchestrates procedure execution, and how does it integrate with your SIEM and communication tools?
  • How do incident response procedures integrate with your FedRAMP ICP workflow to ensure notification requirements are met automatically?
  • Are incident response runbooks and playbooks version-controlled and linked to specific detection rules and alert types?
  • What tools support forensic investigation and evidence preservation as part of your incident response procedures?

Continuous Evidence & Schedules:

  • How frequently are incident response procedures reviewed for effectiveness, and what evidence shows each review was completed?
  • Is incident response performance data (detection time, response time, resolution time per incident) available via API or dashboard?
  • What evidence demonstrates that procedure reviews result in concrete updates to runbooks, playbooks, and automation?
  • How do you prove that tabletop exercises and drills are conducted on schedule and that findings drive procedure improvements?

Update History

2026-02-04Removed italics and changed the ID as part of new standardization in v0.9.0-beta; no material changes.

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