How do you measure cybersecurity incident response efficiency?

2 Quality metrics

It's essential to consider how well you can prevent, limit, and learn from an attack when it comes to incident response. Quality metrics measure the outcome and impact of each incident, as well as the feedback and lessons learned from your incident response process. These metrics include incident frequency, severity, recurrence, root cause analysis, and satisfaction. By evaluating these metrics, you can assess the effectiveness and reliability of your incident response team, pinpoint any gaps or weaknesses in your security posture, measure your return on investment, reduce your risk exposure, and enhance your continuous improvement.

3 Resource metrics

Efficiently utilizing resources and capabilities is a third key aspect of incident response. Resource metrics measure the input and output of your incident response process, including the number of people assigned to handle an incident, their roles and responsibilities, the level of expertise and training of team members, certifications, accreditation status, the types and quality of tools used to support your incident response process, and policies and guidelines that define your incident response process. These metrics can help you maximize how you allocate and manage your incident response resources, as well as identify any gaps or needs in your capabilities. Moreover, they can be used to plan out budgets, enhance productivity, and increase resilience.

4 How to measure cybersecurity incident response efficiency

To measure your cybersecurity incident response efficiency, you need to define your metrics, collect your data, analyze your results, and report your findings. Begin by choosing the metrics that are relevant and meaningful for your organization based on goals, objectives, and expectations. Utilize industry standards, best practices, or frameworks such as the NIST Cybersecurity Framework to guide you. Gather data that supports your metrics from reliable and consistent sources such as logs, alerts, tickets, surveys, and interviews. Automated tools like security information and event management (SIEM) systems can help you collect and store data. Calculate and compare metrics with statistical methods like averages, percentages, ratios, or trends. Visualization tools like charts, graphs, or dashboards can help you display and interpret data. Communicate and share metrics with clear and concise language in a format or style that works for the stakeholders such as management, customers, or regulators. Reports, presentations or meetings are all potential ways to inform and engage stakeholders. It's important to remember that measuring cybersecurity incident response efficiency is an ongoing process requiring regular monitoring, evaluation and improvement. By using metrics you can gain valuable insights into incident response performance to make informed decisions, demonstrate value and improve security posture.

5 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?