Incident response is a critical need throughout government and industry as cyber threat actors look to compromise critical assets within organizations with cascading, often catastrophic, effects. In 2021, for example, a hacker allegedly accessed a Florida water treatment plant's computer systems and poisoned the water supply. Within the U.S. critical national infrastructure, 77 percent of organizations have seen a rise in insider-driven cyber threats over the last three years. The 2023 IBM Cost of a Data Breach reoport highlights the crucial role of having a well-tested incident response plan. Companies without a tested plan in place will face 82 percent higher costs in the event of a cyber attack, compared to those that have implemented and tested such a plan. Researchers in the SEI CERT Division compiled 10 lessons learned from our more than 35 years of developing and working with incident response and security teams throughout the globe. These lessons are relevant to incident response teams contending with an ever-evolving cyber threat landscape. In honor of the CERT Division (also referred to the CERT Coordination Center in our work with the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams) celebrating 35 years of operation, in this blog post we take a look back at some of the lessons learned from our Cyber Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) capacity building experiences that also apply to other areas of security operations.
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