# NIST800 171 3.6.1 — Incident Handling

- Source: https://support.icompaas.com/support/solutions/articles/a_gen_nist800171_361_1a72d628a0-nist800-171-361-incident-handling
- Section: [Solutions](https://support.icompaas.com/support/solutions) › [NIST SP 800-171 Readiness](https://support.icompaas.com/support/solutions/c_gen_nist800171) › [Incident Response](https://support.icompaas.com/support/solutions/folders/f_gen_cgennist800171_incidentresponse)
- Last updated: 2026-05-30
- Publisher: iCompaas, Inc. (https://www.icompaas.com)

NIST800 171 · Control 3.6.1 · Priority: critical · Component: Incident Response

### What this control covers

This control requires implementing an incident-handling capability that aligns with the organization's incident response plan. The capability should include preparation, detection, analysis, containment, eradication, and recovery, involving coordination across various organizational entities, such as security, legal, and operational teams. This control supports the Incident Handling Capability capability within the Incident Response (3.6) family.

### Why it matters

How quickly and methodically you contain an incident determines the regulatory consequence — most fines are not for the breach itself but for the slow or absent response.

### How to implement

#### AWS

Wire **GuardDuty**, **Security Hub** and **Macie** findings into your ticketing/SIEM via EventBridge. Maintain documented playbooks for IAM-key compromise, EC2 instance compromise, S3 data exposure, and run **quarterly tabletop exercises**.

#### Azure

Use **Defender for Cloud** + **Microsoft Sentinel** with playbooks (Logic Apps) for automated containment — disable user, isolate VM (NSG), revoke session tokens. Keep an on-call rotation in Teams with PagerDuty.

#### GCP

**Org Policy Service** for guardrails and **Config Validator** in CI to pre-check Terraform plans against policy as code (Rego).

#### Google Workspace

**Google Vault** retention rules cover Gmail/Drive/Chat; combine with periodic third-party backups (e.g., Spanning, Backupify) for full restore-by-user.

#### GitHub

Subscribe to **secret-scanning** alerts and **Dependabot** security advisories; require triage SLAs by severity. For exposed secrets, rotate at the cloud provider FIRST then revoke at GitHub — order matters.

### Evidence to collect

-   `ticketing_workflow` — See the iCompaas Evidence library for the canonical source for this evidence type.

Workflow metrics (ServiceNow, Jira) show approvals and remediation. Focus: Incident Handling.

### Quick checklist

-   Response — Management / Preparation
-   Incident — Management / Preparation
-   Security — Management / Preparation
-   Plan — Management / Preparation

### Related articles on this site

-   [NIST 800-171 3.6.1 Establish an operational incident-handling capability for organizational systems that includes preparation, detection, analysis, containment, recovery, and user response activities.](https://support.icompaas.com/support/solutions/articles/62000229301-nist-800-171-3-6-1-establish-an-operational-incident-handling-capability-for-organizational-systems-t)
-   [CMMC 2.0 IR.2.092 Establish an operational incident-handling capability for organizational systems that includes preparation, detection, analysis, containment, recovery, and user response activities.](https://support.icompaas.com/support/solutions/articles/62000229547-cmmc-2-0-ir-2-092-establish-an-operational-incident-handling-capability-for-organizational-systems-th)
-   [NIST 800-171 3.6.3 Test the organizational incident response capability.](https://support.icompaas.com/support/solutions/articles/62000229303-nist-800-171-3-6-3-test-the-organizational-incident-response-capability-)
-   [Ensure Amazon EBS volumes should be protected by a backup plan.](https://support.icompaas.com/support/solutions/articles/62000236457-ensure-amazon-ebs-volumes-should-be-protected-by-a-backup-plan-)

## Related compliance guidance

- [NIST SP 800-171 and CMMC: a practical guide to protecting CUI in the cloud](https://support.icompaas.com/compliance/nist-sp-800-171-rev-3): The CUI requirements CMMC Level 2 assesses, the SPRS score, POA&M rules and the phased DFARS rollout.
- [NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5: a practical implementation guide for cloud teams](https://support.icompaas.com/compliance/nist-sp-800-53-rev-5): The federal catalogue 800-171 is derived from — useful when a contract also cites a FedRAMP baseline.