[Federal Register Volume 78, Number 125 (Friday, June 28, 2013)]
[Notices]
[Pages 38949-38951]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2013-15542]


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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

National Institute of Standards and Technology

[Docket Number: 130417383-3383-01]


Computer Security Incident Coordination (CSIC): Providing Timely 
Cyber Incident Response

AGENCY: National Institute of Standards and Technology, U.S. Department 
of Commerce.

ACTION: Notice; Request for Information (RFI).

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SUMMARY: The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is 
seeking information relating to Computer Security Incident Coordination 
(CSIC). NIST is seeking this information as part of the research needed 
to write a NIST Special Publication (SP) to help Computer Security 
Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) to coordinate effectively when 
responding to computer security incidents. The NIST SP will identify 
technical standards, methodologies, procedures, and processes that 
facilitate prompt and effective response.
    This RFI requests information regarding technical best practices, 
current practices, impediments to information sharing and response, 
risks of collaborative incident response, the role of technology and 
standards in incident coordination, specific technical standards and 
technologies that have been found helpful (or ineffective), 
opportunities for improvement, viewpoints on incident coordination 
objectives, and suggestions for guidance. In developing the SP, NIST 
will consult

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with the Department of Homeland Security, the National Security Agency, 
other interested federal agencies, the Office of Management and Budget, 
and individually with other parties who respond to this RFI to discuss 
their comments and seek further information. The SP will be developed 
through an open public review and comment process that may include 
workshops as needed.

DATES: Comments must be received by 5:00 p.m. Eastern time on July 29, 
2013.

ADDRESSES: Written comments may be submitted by mail to Diane 
Honeycutt, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau 
Drive, Stop 8930, Gaithersburg, MD 20899. Submissions may be in any of 
the following formats: HTML, ASCII, Word, RTF, or PDF. Online 
submissions in electronic form may be sent to 
[email protected]. Please submit comments only and include 
your name, company name (if any), and cite ``Computer Security Incident 
Coordination'' in all correspondence. All comments received by the 
deadline will be posted at http://csrc.nist.gov without change or 
redaction, so commenters should not include information they do not 
wish to be posted (e.g., personal or confidential business 
information).

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: For questions about this RFI, contact: 
Lee Badger, National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau 
Drive, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8930, telephone (301) 975-3176, email 
[email protected]. Please direct media inquiries to NIST's Office of 
Public Affairs at (301) 975-NIST.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The nation is increasingly reliant on secure 
and reliable operation of computing systems throughout Federal 
Government, key industrial sectors, and civil society. Unfortunately, 
modern computing systems frequently are exposed to various forms of 
cyber attack. In some cases, attacks can be thwarted through the use of 
defensive technologies, such as anti-virus scanning, cryptographically-
protected communications, access control, or authentication mechanisms. 
Despite careful use of defensive technologies, however, some systems 
will be successfully attacked. When a successful attack occurs, the job 
of a Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) is to detect that 
an attack occurred, prevent ongoing damage, repair the damage to the 
extent possible, reconstitute the affected system functions, and report 
as appropriate to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team 
(US-CERT) and to other affected parties according to governing 
regulation and law. Maintaining a security response capability is a 
complex and challenging undertaking, and in order to assist those in 
charge of security efforts, NIST has published guidance, such as NIST 
SP 800-61 Revision 2 ``Computer Security Incident Handling Guide.'' \1\
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    \1\ http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/nistpubs/800-61rev2/SP800-61rev2.pdf
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    NIST SP 800-61 provides guidance on how to establish and operate an 
incident response capability. The guide provides information on 
developing procedures for performing incident handling and reporting, 
for structuring a team, staffing, and training. The guide defines an 
incident response life cycle encompassing four phases: Preparation, 
detection and analysis, containment eradication and recovery, and post-
incident activity. Although the NIST incident handling guide focuses 
primarily on how to handle incidents within a single organization, it 
also provides high-level guidance on how a CSIRT may interact with 
outside parties, such as coordinating centers, Internet Service 
Providers, owners of attacking systems, victims, other CSIRTs, and 
vendors. This guidance focuses primarily on understanding team-to-team 
relationships, sharing agreements, and the role that automation 
techniques may play in the coordination of incident response.
    This RFI seeks information for a substantial expansion of NIST 
guidance in how multiple CSIRTs may work together to coordinate their 
handling of computer security incidents and how CSIRTs might work 
together with other organizations within a broader information sharing 
community. This information will serve as input to a new NIST SP, 800-
150, ``Computer Security Incident Coordination.'' The goal of this 
planned document is to provide guidance for cross-organizational 
incident response, particularly focusing on improving the overall 
response during cross-cutting and widespread incidents, inspiring 
effective information sharing practices, and fostering interoperability 
between teams with varying capabilities. The new SP 800-150 will 
supplement the existing NIST incident handling guide, SP 800-61, by 
significantly expanding the guidance on coordination and information 
sharing (section 4 of SP 800-61). Although work on SP 800-150 may 
produce guidance that eventually contributes to a revision of SP 800-
61, the focus of SP 800-150 will be on the coordination aspects of 
incident response.
    For the purposes of this RFI, the term ``incident coordination'' is 
defined as communication and collaboration with external entities 
during an incident response such that:
     Two or more organizations are involved.
     There is an exchange of information between organizations 
pertaining to incidents or indicators of incidents.
     The organizations work together to achieve common goals 
(i.e., fast, effective incident response).
     The organizations limit exposures of sensitive 
information.
    NIST seeks information regarding technical best practices, current 
practices, impediments to information sharing and response, risks of 
collaborative incident response, the role of technology and standards 
in incident coordination, specific technical standards and technologies 
that have been found helpful (or ineffective), opportunities for 
improvement, viewpoints on incident coordination objectives, and 
suggestions for guidance.

Request for Information

    The following questions cover the major areas about which NIST 
seeks information. The questions are not intended to limit the topics 
that may be addressed. Responses may include any topic believed to have 
implications for effective incident coordination regardless of whether 
the topic is included in this document.
    Comments containing references, studies, research, and other 
empirical data that are not widely published should include copies of 
the referenced materials. Do not include in comments or otherwise 
submit proprietary or confidential information, as all comments 
received by the deadline will be made available publically at http://csrc.nist.gov/.

General Incident Coordination Considerations

    1. What does your organization see as the greatest challenge in 
information sharing throughout the incident response lifecycle?
    2. Describe your organization's policies and procedures governing 
information sharing throughout the incident lifecycle. Also describe to 
what degree senior management is involved in defining these policies 
and procedures.
    3. What role does senior management have in the execution of your 
policies and procedures?
    4. To what extent is information sharing incorporated into your

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organization's overarching policies and processes?
    5. How much of your incident handling effort is spent on the 
different phases of the incident handling lifecycle (from NIST SP 800-
61): (1) Preparation, (2) detection-and-analysis, (3) containment-
eradication-and-recovery, (4) post-incident-activity.
    6. What are the relevant international, sector-specific or de facto 
standards used or referenced by your organization to support incident 
handling and related information sharing activities?
    7. How do you determine that an incident is in progress (or has 
happened)?
    8. How do you determine that an incident has been handled and 
requires no further action?
    9. How do you determine when to coordinate and/or share information 
with other organizations regarding an incident?
    10. Do you have documented case studies or lessons learned to share 
(good or bad examples)? If so, please provide URLs or attachments with 
your response.

Organizational Capabilities and Considerations for Effective Incident 
Coordination

    Incident handling teams and coordinating centers often collaborate 
at varying stages of the incident management lifecycle described by 
NIST SP 800-61. Within this context, individual organizations may offer 
specific capabilities and may have specific considerations related to 
effective incident coordination.
    1. Do you maintain a list of key contacts for use during an 
incident? If so, are these contacts identified as individual people, or 
as positions?
    2. What is the size of your organization (e.g. staff, contractors, 
members)? How many individuals are involved in incident coordination 
activities carried out by your organization?
    3. Relative to the incident response lifecycle defined by NIST SP 
800-61, what aspects of incident coordination occur within your 
organization?
    4. What services and assistance (e.g. monitoring, analysis, 
information) does your organization provide to others both inside and 
outside your organization relating to incident coordination?
    5. Does your organization have any method for understanding and 
describing the quality or sensitivity of different types of information 
shared by a third party? For each type of information, can you describe 
the method?
    6. Approximately how many employees (please indicate full time or 
part time as appropriate) do you devote to incident response?
    7. If possible, list examples of highly effective computer security 
incident response teams and comment on what made them successful.
    8. Based on your personal or your organization's experience, what 
are the most and least effective communication mechanisms used (e.g., 
phone, email, etc.) when coordinating an incident, and why? In what 
order do you typically use specific communication mechanisms?
    9. Do you have examples of alternate communication mechanisms used 
because an incident has degraded communications?
    10. Do you hold regular incident review meetings? Between 
organizations? How frequently? If your team does not hold incident 
review meetings regularly, why not?
    11. What skillsets (e.g., network sniffing, system administration, 
firewall configuration, reverse engineering, etc.) does your 
organization need most when an incident is in progress?
    12. Are there incident handling and response skillsets that are 
specific to your industry or sector?
    13. How do those skills relate to information sharing and 
communication before, during and after an incident?

Coordinated Handling of an Incident

    1. Do you report incidents or indicators to US-CERT?
    2. Do you coordinate incident response with organizations other 
than US-CERT?
    3. Do you participate in an incident coordination community such as 
the Defense Industrial Base (DIB), the Defense Security Information 
Exchange (DSIE), or an Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC)? 
What are the benefits? Are there any pain points?
    4. How is information about threats and/or incidents shared among 
coordination community members?
    5. How do you prioritize incidents?
    6. How do regulatory requirements affect your organization's 
ability or willingness to share information or collaborate during an 
incident?
    7. What regulatory bodies are you required to report information to 
regarding incidents? For each regulatory body, what kind of information 
does your organization report and what has been your organization's 
reporting experience?

Data Handling Considerations

    1. What, if any, types of information would create risk or 
disadvantage if shared by your organization?
    2. What kinds of information would you never share with a peer 
during incident handling?
    3. What types of protections, redactions, or restrictions would aid 
your organization in sharing information?
    4. Do you use specialized formats to communicate incident 
information?
    5. What do you see as the pros and cons of specialized formats for 
representing and communicating incident information?
    6. What incentives exist for your organization to share information 
with other organizations during an incident?
    7. What disincentives exist that might prevent your organization 
from sharing information with other organizations during an incident?
    8. If available, please provide an example when sharing with other 
organizations proved to have negative implications for your 
organization's incident response.

Specific Industry Practices

    In addition to the approaches above, NIST is interested in 
identifying core practices that are broadly applicable across sectors 
and throughout industry.

    Dated: June 24, 2013.
Willie E. May,
Associate Director for Laboratory Programs.
[FR Doc. 2013-15542 Filed 6-27-13; 8:45 am]
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