Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced that the organization has released the Federal Government Cybersecurity Incident and Vulnerability Response Playbooks and urged private sector partners to review it to empower their vulnerability and incident response practices. The playbooks are created in accordance with Executive Order 14028, “Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity”.
Building on lessons learned
CISA also stated that the playbooks offer a standard set of procedures to respond to vulnerabilities and incidents that are capable of impacting Federal Civilian Executive Branch networks. The playbooks are created based on lessons learned from previous incidents and incorporating industry best practices and aims to help organizations strengthen cybersecurity response practices and operational procedures.
CISA’s new playbooks include checklists for incident response, incident response preparation, and vulnerability response. The organizations can adapt to the playbook to track necessary activities.
- The Incident Response Playbook applies to incidents that involve confirmed malicious cyber activity and for which a major incident has been declared or not yet been reasonably ruled out.
- The Vulnerability Response Playbook applies to any vulnerability that is observed to be used by adversaries to gain unauthorized entry into computing resources.
Matt Hartman, Deputy Executive Assistant Director for Cybersecurity said,
«The playbooks we are releasing today are intended to improve and standardize the approaches used by federal agencies to identify, remediate, and recover from vulnerabilities and incidents affecting their systems. This important step, set in motion by President Biden’s Cyber Executive Order, will enable more comprehensive analysis and mitigation of vulnerabilities and incidents across the civilian enterprise. We encourage our public and private sector partners to review the playbooks to take stock of their own vulnerability and incident response practices.»