This plan stages the incident response and continuity content needed for IR and CP controls. It must become operational runbooks with named responders, tested procedures, and retained evidence.
Incident Severity
| Severity | Definition | Response Target | Examples |
|---|
| SEV1 | Confirmed or likely security compromise, major data exposure, or production outage with severe mission impact. | Immediate triage and executive notification. | Active compromise, widespread outage, exposed credentials |
| SEV2 | Significant degradation, suspicious activity, or control failure with serious risk. | Same business day triage. | Failed backup, privileged access anomaly, high CVE exposure |
| SEV3 | Limited issue with contained impact. | Next business day triage. | Isolated alert, minor control drift |
| SEV4 | Low-risk operational issue or improvement. | Planned remediation. | Documentation gap, non-urgent hardening task |
Incident Roles
| Role | Responsibility | Primary | Backup |
|---|
| Incident Commander | Coordinates response and decisions. | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] |
| Security Lead | Owns security analysis and containment recommendations. | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] |
| Platform Lead | Owns infrastructure, Kubernetes, deployment, and recovery actions. | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] |
| Application Lead | Owns application behavior, patches, and data review. | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] |
| Communications Lead | Owns internal, customer, agency, and regulator communications. | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] |
| Scribe | Maintains timeline, decisions, evidence, and action items. | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] |
Incident Workflow
- Detect and open an incident record.
- Assign severity, roles, and communication channel.
- Preserve evidence before destructive containment.
- Contain the issue.
- Eradicate root cause.
- Recover service.
- Validate controls and monitoring.
- Produce after-action report.
- Create POA&M items for unresolved gaps.
Reporting
| Event | Reporting Path | Timeline | Evidence |
|---|
| Confirmed federal security incident | [FILL IN: agency and CISA path] | [VERIFY with agency and contract] | Incident ticket and notification record |
| Customer-impacting outage | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] | Status update and timeline |
| Credential exposure | Security, System Owner, affected providers | Immediate triage | Rotation logs and access review |
| Data exposure | Privacy, Legal, Security, System Owner | [VERIFY] | Impact analysis and notification decision |
Backup Strategy
| System | Backup Method | Frequency | Encryption | Restore Test |
|---|
| Postgres | [FILL IN: pgBackRest, managed backup, or other] | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] | Quarterly minimum |
| SQLite | [FILL IN: snapshot, export, or managed storage backup] | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] | Quarterly minimum |
| Object storage | Versioning and lifecycle rules | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] | Quarterly minimum |
| Kubernetes configuration | GitOps repository and cluster export | Per change | Repository controls | Per DR exercise |
| Secrets | Secret-manager backup or recovery procedure | [FILL IN] | Provider-managed | Annual exercise |
Recovery Objectives
| Service | RTO | RPO | Recovery Procedure | Owner |
|---|
| Web application | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] | Redeploy via Argo CD. | Platform Engineering |
| API services | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] | Redeploy via Argo CD. | Platform Engineering |
| Primary database | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] | Restore from tested backup. | Operations |
| Audit logs | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] | Restore or rehydrate retained logs. | Operations |
| Identity integration | [FILL IN] | [FILL IN] | Fail over or recover IdP configuration. | Security |
Exercise Plan
| Exercise | Cadence | Success Criteria | Evidence |
|---|
| Tabletop incident exercise | Annual minimum | Roles, escalation, and reporting decisions are understood. | Exercise notes and action items |
| Backup restore test | Quarterly minimum | Restored data meets RTO and RPO. | Restore log and validation result |
| Disaster recovery exercise | Annual minimum | Critical service restored in alternate path or documented recovery sequence. | DR report |
| Credential compromise drill | Annual minimum | Keys are rotated and access is reviewed. | Rotation logs and access review |
Evidence Checklist