Overview[]
National Institute of Standards and Technology, Computer Security Incident Handling Guide (NIST Special Publication 800-61) (Rev. 1) (Mar. 2008) (full-text); (Rev. 2) (Jan. 2012) (full-text).
Overview[]
This publication provides guidance on how to establish and operate an incident response capability. The guide provides information on developing procedures for performing incident handling and reporting, for structuring a team, staffing, and training. The guide defines an incident response life cycle encompassing four phases: preparation, detection and analysis, containment eradication and recovery, and post-incident activity.
Although the NIST incident handling guide focuses primarily on how to handle incidents within a single organization, it also provides high-level guidance on how a CSIRT may interact with outside parties, such as coordinating centers, Internet Service Providers, owners of attacking systems, victims, other CSIRTs, and vendors.
This guidance focuses primarily on understanding team-to-team relationships, sharing agreements, and the role that automation techniques may play in the coordination of incident response.