The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is requesting public feedback on the draft of the National Cyber Incident Response Plan, or NCIRP, updating policies from the original 2016 release.
“This draft NCIRP Update leverages the lessons learned over the past several years to achieve a deeper unity of effort between the government and the private sector,” said CISA Director Jen Easterly. Public comment on the draft will help maximize NCIRP’s effectiveness against an increasingly difficult threat environment, added Easterly, a 2024 Wash100 awardee,
CISA conducted extensive collaboration with its government and industry partners to draft a framework that provides sound security coordination to match adversarial actions. In June, the agency and the Joint Cyber Defense Collaborative conducted an AI tabletop exercise among artificial intelligence experts from government and industry to foster response coordination on AI cybersecurity breaches.
Coordinated Cyber Incident Response Mechanisms
In the NCIRP draft, CISA identified the coordinating structures that may be tapped for responses on cyber incidents requiring coordinated cross-sectoral, public-private or federal action.
The 42-page NCIRP draft focuses on four key updates, including a way for non-federal stakeholders to join in a coordinated cyber incident response. The plan also features condensed and organized content aligned to an operational lifecycle, with the goal of improving NCIRP’s usability.
In addition, the updated draft provides relevant legislation and policy changes on agency roles and responsibilities in cybersecurity. The draft’s fourth highlight offers a predictable timeline for future NCIRP updates.
CISA requests that comments be submitted in writing on or before Jan. 15. Feedback can be sent directly through the Federal Register’s public document portal at regulations.gov.
