17.8·high·Component: RecoverWhat this control requires
Conduct post-incident reviews. Post-incident reviews help prevent incident recurrence through identifying lessons learned and follow-up action.
In plain English
Conduct post-incident reviews. In practice, this means you can prove you conduct reviews-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 high. Auditors expect a named owner, a remediation SLA, and a tooling artefact that evidences continuous operation.
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 Recover, the assessor will trace your implementation back to the catalogue reference (Control 17.8) 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
- Conduct. Document the trigger, the owner and the cadence.
- Scope: reviews, response, post-incident reviews.
Evidence to collect
- Ticketing Workflow.
ticketing_workflowevidence
Workflow metrics (ServiceNow, Jira) show approvals and remediation. Focus: Conduct Post-Incident Reviews.
Common pitfalls
- Runbooks that name a role but no person, or list a paging channel that no longer exists.
How it maps to other frameworks
Computed from shared tags, control component and key-operation subjects — handy when you are reconciling controls across an audit.
- SOC 2 (2017 TSC) CC7.4 — Incident Response
- NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 IR-6 — Incident Reporting
- NIST SP 800-171 Rev. 3 3.6.2 — Incident Monitoring, Reporting, and Response Assistance
- BSI C5:2020 SIM-03 — Documentation and reporting of security incidents
- ISO/IEC 27701:2025 A.3.12 — Response to incidents
Related controls in CIS Controls v8
- Control 17.7 — Conduct Routine Incident Response Exercises
- Control 17.9 — Establish and Maintain Security Incident Thresholds
- Control 17.4 — Establish and Maintain an Incident Response Process
- Control 11.2 — Perform Automated Backups
- Control 17.6 — Define Mechanisms for Communicating During Incident Response
- Control 11.5 — Test Data Recovery
References
- Center for Internet Security — CIS Controls v8
- Catalogue identifier:
Control 17.8
Topics: incident responsechange management