CIS Controls v8·Control 17.2·critical·Component: Respond

What this control requires

Establish and maintain contact information for parties that need to be informed of security incidents. Contacts may include internal staff, third-party vendors, law enforcement, cyber insurance providers, relevant government agencies, Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) partners, or other stakeholders. Verify contacts annually to ensure that information is up-to-date.
— CIS Controls v8, Control 17.2

In plain English

Establish and maintain contact information for parties that need to be informed of security incidents. In practice, this means you can prove you establish and maintain date-level controls on a defined cadence.

Why it matters

The CIS Controls are an industry-vetted, prioritised defence: skipping a safeguard widens the attack surface that the safeguards above and below it assume is closed. Audit frameworks (FedRAMP, PCI DSS, HIPAA) all cite CIS as evidence of due care.

This control is rated critical in the source catalogue. Treat gaps here as production incidents in the risk register, not housekeeping.

What an auditor looks for

A CIS-aligned reviewer wants to see (a) which Implementation Group you are targeting, (b) a documented owner for the safeguard, and (c) a tooling or process artefact (config, scan output, ticket) that proves the safeguard runs on the cadence the control demands.

Within Respond, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control 17.2) and look for objective evidence on the latest two assessment cycles.

How to implement

Incident Response

Runbook. Maintain a runbook keyed by incident type with named roles (IC, comms, scribe), an out-of-band comms channel, and a 72-hour timeline for external notification.

Tabletop. Run a quarterly tabletop exercise (ransomware, insider, supply-chain) and feed gaps back into the runbook.

Operational checklist

  • Establish And Maintain. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
  • Ensure. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
  • Scope: date, response, internal staff, third party vendors, law enforcement, cyber insurance providers, analysis center, partners.

Evidence to collect

  • Vendor Risk Management. vendor_risk_management evidence

Third-party risk management evidence (assessments, contracts, due diligence) shows supplier oversight. Focus: Establish and Maintain Contact Information for Reporting Security Incidents.

Common pitfalls

  • Runbooks that name a role but no person, or list a paging channel that no longer exists.

Related controls in CIS Controls v8

References

Topics: vendor riskvendor managementincident responsesecurity trainingsupply chain security