On December 16, 2024, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) published a draft of the revised National Cyber Incident Response Plan (NCIRP) in the Federal Register. Feedback on the draft is needed and will be accepted on or before January 15, 2025.
First published in 2016, the NCIRP is a national strategic plan for organized response to cyber incidents. An update was necessary because of the evolving cyber threat environment, and to tackle the adjustments in policy and government legislation, and the new organizational functions since the NCIRP was published in 2016. The NCIRP deals with cyber incidents of Level 2 severity or higher according to the Cyber Incident Severity Scheme. The incidents may affect public well-being or safety, national safety, economic safety, foreign associations, civil liberties, or public trust.
The NCIRP handles four primary areas of effort: Asset Response, Threat Response, Affected Entity Response, and Intelligence Support, including coordination systems, key decision points, and priority actions. The NCIRP describes how government bureaus can assist by giving technical assistance to impacted entities, law enforcement/national safety inspections, gathering and sharing threat intelligence to reduce the threat capabilities of enemies, and incident control to reduce the effect, ensure operational continuity, and conformity with legal and regulatory specifications including HIPAA.
Instead of a step-by-step guideline for addressing cyber incidents, the NCIRP consists of adaptable response plans that describe the important functions of government cyber agencies and coordination structures for handling important cyber incidents that demand cross-sector, federal, or public-private coordination. The update consists of a definite path for non-government stakeholders to take part in the management of cyber incident response, structured content that lines up with the operational lifecycle, legitimate and policy adjustments that affect agency functions and responsibilities, and a foreseeable cycle for future changes to the NCIRP.
Today, a more complicated threat environment requires having a seamless, flexible, and efficient incident response framework. This version of the NCIRP Update utilizes the lessons discovered in the last few years to accomplish a deeper harmony of effort between the federal and private fields. Public response and opinions help to ensure its utmost efficiency.