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State of the Practice of Computer Security Incident Response Teams ...

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3.2.2 Mission<br />

Because <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> wide variety <strong>of</strong> CSIRTs and <strong>the</strong> diverse constituencies <strong>the</strong>y serve, <strong>the</strong>re is no<br />

one standard mission that all teams proclaim. The majority <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> CSIRTs participating in our<br />

survey stated that <strong>the</strong>y have an identified mission statement and included that statement or an<br />

approximation. Most mission statements included references to<br />

• protecting and maintaining <strong>the</strong> security <strong>of</strong> constituent systems<br />

• managing and coordinating incident response activities<br />

• minimizing damage in <strong>the</strong> event <strong>of</strong> a security incident<br />

• educating <strong>the</strong> constituency on security issues and best practices<br />

Many teams define <strong>the</strong>ir mission on <strong>the</strong>ir main web page and in literature describing <strong>the</strong>ir<br />

services. Mission statements can easily be found for a large number <strong>of</strong> national and coordinating<br />

CSIRTs. It is more difficult to find mission statements for MSSP CSIRTs, as <strong>the</strong>ir web<br />

pages are devoted to <strong>the</strong> types <strong>of</strong> services that clients can purchase.<br />

An example <strong>of</strong> a national CSIRT mission can be seen on SingCERT’s “About SingCERT”<br />

page [SingCERT 03]:<br />

“Mission<br />

One Point <strong>of</strong> Trusted Contact<br />

Facilitate <strong>Security</strong> Threats Resolution<br />

Increase National Competency in IT <strong>Security</strong>”<br />

The roles and responsibilities <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> team, <strong>the</strong> mission and goals that it has, and how <strong>the</strong> team<br />

will operate must be identified and refined as <strong>the</strong> CSIRT is being planned and developed.<br />

One thing we have also learned is that teams evolve over time. Effective CSIRTs must be<br />

able to adapt to changes in funding, mission, constituency, management, or staffing. This has<br />

happened to a number <strong>of</strong> teams, including <strong>the</strong> CERT/CC, AusCERT, and DFN-CERT, to<br />

mention a few.<br />

3.2.3 Organizational Placement <strong>of</strong> <strong>the</strong> CSIRT<br />

There is no clear standard or consistent placement or location <strong>of</strong> a CSIRT within <strong>the</strong> organizational<br />

reporting structure <strong>of</strong> a host or parent organization. Current teams are positioned<br />

across a wide range <strong>of</strong> departments, including <strong>the</strong> information technology (IT) department,<br />

security department, and even <strong>the</strong> audit or compliance department. A CSIRT can also be its<br />

own department not located within any o<strong>the</strong>r area. It is difficult to determine where a team is<br />

located in <strong>the</strong> organization without looking at an organization chart or asking <strong>the</strong> team. For<br />

MSSP CSIRTs, you may be able to find <strong>the</strong> division <strong>the</strong> service is located in by looking at<br />

CMU/SEI-2003-TR-001 51

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