How do you measure the effectiveness of your security response plan with NIST?

1 What is NIST?

NIST stands for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a US federal agency that develops and publishes standards, guidelines, and recommendations for various domains, including information security. NIST has a series of publications that cover different aspects of security, such as risk management, cybersecurity, and incident response. One of the most widely used and referenced publications is the NIST Special Publication 800-61 Revision 2, Computer Security Incident Handling Guide, which provides a comprehensive and flexible framework for security incident response.

2 Why use NIST?

NIST is a reputable and authoritative source of guidance for security professionals and organizations. The NIST framework for security incident response is based on extensive research and collaboration with experts from the public and private sectors. It is designed to be adaptable and scalable to different types of incidents, organizations, and environments. It also provides a common language and terminology for security incident response, which facilitates communication and coordination among stakeholders. Moreover, NIST is compatible and complementary with other security standards and frameworks, such as ISO 27001, COBIT, and ITIL.

3 How to use NIST?

The NIST framework for security incident response consists of four main phases: preparation, detection and analysis, containment, eradication, and recovery, and post-incident activity. Each phase has specific objectives, tasks, and outputs that guide the security team and the organization through the incident response process. The NIST framework also provides recommendations for incident response policies, plans, procedures, teams, tools, and metrics. To use the NIST framework effectively, you should tailor it to your organization's needs, goals, resources, and capabilities. You should also review and update it regularly to reflect changes in your environment, threats, and best practices.

4 How to measure NIST?

Using the NIST framework for security incident response can help you measure and evaluate the effectiveness of your security response plan. The framework recommends several metrics to assess the performance of your incident response process, such as time to detect, contain, eradicate, and recover from an incident; number and severity of incidents; impact and cost of incidents; customer satisfaction and feedback; compliance with legal and regulatory requirements; and lessons learned and improvement actions. You can collect and analyze these metrics through surveys, interviews, reports, logs, audits, or reviews. Additionally, you can compare your metrics with industry benchmarks or best practices to identify gaps and opportunities for improvement.

5 How to improve NIST?

The NIST framework for security incident response is not a static document. Rather, it is a dynamic and flexible guide that can be tailored to an organization’s context and experience. Following the NIST framework encourages post-incident activities such as documenting and reporting the incident, analyzing the root cause, identifying corrective and preventive actions, evaluating the incident response process and its outcomes, and updating policies, plans, procedures, teams, tools, and metrics. By doing so, you can improve the effectiveness of your security response plan and ensure it is in line with the NIST framework for security incident response. Furthermore, sharing lessons learned and best practices with relevant stakeholders can help ensure successful incident response.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?