Coordinated Response
Services and tools for incident response management

A Focus on Incident Response

Coordinated Response is an incident response planning and consulting firm. We help you create an incident response plan, improve upon it, automate it, and manage it.

My focus, my interest, my expertise are in the area of incident response planning and management. Seasoned in business process management & automation, I have helped numerous organizations build business response management solutions. Working with my key advisers – Jim Bothe and John Walsh (see About Us – Leadership) – I began focusing on cybersecurity incident response management.

Prepare, Protect, Respond

Where does response management fall in the realm of cybersecurity?

Most people asked about cybersecurity tools mention antivirus software or firewalls or intrusion detection systems. These important tools help to protect systems and information. But, if these tools fail, if an incident occurs, an organized, coordinated response to the incident is needed.

Other people think about the effort to prepare the security plan and architecture. Preparation starts with a risk assessment, includes the security architecture, but should include an incident response plan. To respond to an incident without a well thought out, well tested, well practiced plan increases the risk, the cost, and the overall impact of the incident.

Some organizations might consider any activity performed by the Computer Security Incident Response Team or CSIRT as incident response, but many CSIRT activities are pro-active. The CSIRT may participate in preparation and protection as part of incident management, not just the narrower incident response. In addition, legal, human resources, security may also participate as extended team members of the CSIRT.

The diagram above is based on one in the publication Defining Incident Management Processes for CSIRTs: A Work in Progress, Carnegie Mellon University / Software Engineering Institute, May, 2004. The publication, Technical Report CMU/SEI-2004-TR-015, is available at http://www.sei.cmu.edu/library/abstracts/reports/04tr015.cfm. The authors provide both insight and useful guidance. Be not fooled by its publication date or the tag line “a work in progress”.