Because cyber threats continue to grow in sophistication and effectiveness, cyber incident reporting is not only important but also necessary for other organizations to learn from and prevent making the same mistakes. Many governing bodies and federal governments around the world have begun to require cyber incident reporting to document the type of attacks used, the source of the attacks, and how the attacks occurred to better understand the threat landscape.
Imagine a nightmare where you are in a dark tunnel and every minute without reaching the light costs a fortune. You try everything to find the exit, but there is nothing you can do. The incarnation of these nightmares is called “Major Incidents” in the cyber security field. These nightmares are likely to become a reality for managers of many organizations today, where companies manage almost all their business processes with digital solutions.
The Center for Internet Security (CIS) offers Critical Security Controls (CSCs) that help organizations improve cybersecurity. CIS CSC 17 covers incident response and management. (In earlier versions of the CIS controls, handling of security incidents was covered in Control 19.) CIS CSC 17 focuses on how to develop a plan for responding to attacks and other security incidents, including the importance of defining clear roles for those responsible for the various tasks involved.
In order to get a grasp on how to ease security incident management and response processes, there are terms to be clarified first. First of all, a security incident is the common name of an attack towards an organization’s cybersecurity system, network, or data in general. In addition, TechSlang also includes successful attacks within the term “incident”. Therefore, whether impactful or not, all types of attacks, violations, or exploitations can be described as security incidents.