Incident Response Assistance
✓ LOW ✓ MODERATE ✓ HIGHRequirements NIST SOURCE
Provide an incident response support resource, integral to the organizational incident response capability, that offers advice and assistance to users of the system for the handling and reporting of incidents.
Discussion (NIST Supplemental Guidance)
Incident response support resources provided by organizations include help desks, assistance groups, automated ticketing systems to open and track incident response tickets, and access to forensics services or consumer redress services, when required.
Enhancements NIST SOURCE
IR-7(1) Automation Support for Availability of Information and Support LOW ✓ MODERATE ✓ HIGH
Increase the availability of incident response information and support using [automated mechanisms].
Discussion
Automated mechanisms can provide a push or pull capability for users to obtain incident response assistance. For example, individuals may have access to a website to query the assistance capability, or the assistance capability can proactively send incident response information to users (general distribution or targeted) as part of increasing understanding of current response capabilities and support.
IR-7(2) Coordination with External Providers LOW MODERATE HIGH
- (a) Establish a direct, cooperative relationship between its incident response capability and external providers of system protection capability; and
- (b) Identify organizational incident response team members to the external providers.
Discussion
External providers of a system protection capability include the Computer Network Defense program within the U.S. Department of Defense. External providers help to protect, monitor, analyze, detect, and respond to unauthorized activity within organizational information systems and networks. It may be beneficial to have agreements in place with external providers to clarify the roles and responsibilities of each party before an incident occurs.
Implementation Guidance
Original engineering commentary written for this explorer — not NIST source text and not authoritative guidance.
No engineering interpretation has been authored for IR-7 yet. This section is architected to receive it — see the Requirements and Assessment sections above for the authoritative NIST source content in the meantime.
Assessment
Assessment Objectives
- an incident response support resource, integral to the organizational incident response capability, is provided;
- the incident response support resource offers advice and assistance to users of the system for the response and reporting of incidents.
Examine
[SELECT FROM: Incident response policy; procedures addressing incident response assistance; incident response plan; system security plan; privacy plan; other relevant documents or records].
Interview
[SELECT FROM: Organizational personnel with incident response assistance and support responsibilities; organizational personnel with access to incident response support and assistance capability; organizational personnel with information security and privacy responsibilities].
Test
[SELECT FROM: Organizational processes for incident response assistance; mechanisms supporting and/or implementing incident response assistance].
Overlays
STIGs & CCIs
No STIG checks or CCI mappings are currently loaded for IR-7. This section is architected to display, per product: STIG ID, Finding ID, Severity, Title, Description, Check, Fix, CCI, and NIST control mapping — but nothing is populated here until a real DISA STIG/CCI dataset is ingested.
Learn more about STIG/CCI integration →Evidence
Categorized from the SP 800-53A "Examine"/"Test" artifact list above by keyword — not an authoritative NIST evidence list.
Policy
- Incident response policy
- incident response plan
- system security plan
- privacy plan
Testing
- Organizational processes for incident response assistance
- mechanisms supporting and/or implementing incident response assistance
Other Records
- procedures addressing incident response assistance
- other relevant documents or records