Security Incident Response Plan

Why it matters

A documented incident response plan with defined escalation paths, containment procedures, and customer notification protocols reduces detection-to-containment time from weeks to hours and prevents uncoordinated, damage-amplifying responses. Without it, security teams operate reactively, critical communications stall, and regulatory breach notification deadlines are frequently missed.

Evidence to collect

• Current incident response plan document with P1/P2/P3 severity definitions, escalation matrix (who calls whom and in what order), and role assignments including Incident Commander
• Tabletop exercise facilitation notes from past 18 months showing attendance, simulated scenarios (account compromise, exfiltration, ransomware), timeline, and documented findings/remediation items
• Sample incident ticket or report from past 12 months showing severity classification applied, escalation executed per plan, and containment actions documented
• Customer/stakeholder notification template or email showing what information is communicated, by whom, and within what timeframe per plan requirements

Testing procedure

Auditor requests the current plan and validates it contains specific severity criteria (not just "high/medium/low"), escalation decision trees with named roles and contact methods, and step-by-step containment playbooks for at least three common attack vectors. Then pull 2–3 recent incident tickets, verify the severity was classified per the plan criteria, confirm escalation chain was followed within documented timeframes, and confirm containment steps matched documented playbook. Finally, review tabletop exercise records (attendance, scenario, outcomes) from the past 18 months to confirm testing frequency and evidence of real-world learning applied back to the plan.

Common gotchas