Incident Response Assistance IR-7

Incident Response · Low baseline ✗ Not implemented

Status — program-wide

What references this control

No risks name this control in their Framework field yet.

No policies reference it yet.

Link a risk or policy to this control

Attaching adds IR-7 to the item's Framework field; the ✨ AI button suggests the best match. You can also edit the Framework field on a risk / policy directly.

Source: NIST SP 800-53 Rev.5, Incident Response family NIST SP 800-53 Rev.5. The baseline shows the lowest SP 800-53B baseline (Low / Moderate / High) this control appears in NIST SP 800-53B.

Control guide — plain-English, per NIST SP 800-53

IR-7 (Incident Response Assistance) gives the people who use the system a clear place to turn for help handling and reporting an incident. It is the support resource (a named contact, a help channel, an on-call rotation) that sits inside your incident response capability, so a user never has to guess who to tell or what to do. It is a Low-baseline control.

What good looks like

Have a clear point of contact for incidents — a named person, role, or channel, not ‘ask around’.
Make the resource easy to reach and known to everyone who uses the system.
Offer real advice and assistance, not just a drop box — help users work out what to do next.
Cover both handling and reporting so a user can get help acting on an incident and get it written down.
Keep the contact details current so the help line does not go dead.

Framework mapping

NIST CSF 2.0 — RS.CO-03 — Information is shared with designated internal and external stakeholders
CIS Controls v8 — Control 17 — Incident Response Management

How to move it toward Implemented

Name the incident contact (a person or a role) and the channel to reach them, and write it where users will see it.
Publish a short how to report an incident note; you can even surface the contact in the login banner (/etc/motd or /etc/issue).
Confirm the contact details are current and that someone is actually behind the channel.
Attach the reporting note and contact record as hardening evidence on the asset, naming IR-7 in the Requirement field — that moves it from ‘To assess’ toward ‘Completed’.