Security Incident Response Overview

Release version: Washingtondc

Updated February 1, 2024

5 minutes to read

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Summary of Security Incident Response Overview

The Security Incident Response Overview provides insights into security incident activities, including trends, reports, and detailed data tailored to user roles. Users can interact with various visualizations, such as charts and heatmaps, to access specific incident information and detailed lists of incidents by clicking on the visual elements.

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Key Features

Security Incident Manager Overview: Accessible to Security Incident Administrators and Managers, it includes key reports such as counts of critical incidents, SLAs expiring soon, and incidents categorized by risk and severity.
Security Analyst Overview: For Security Incident Analysts, this section displays personal workload metrics, including critical incidents assigned and SLAs due, along with visual representations of incident distribution by type and region.
Security Incident CISO Overview: Available with the Security Incident Analytics plugin, it provides advanced reporting on incident counts, closure rates, and average times for containment and eradication, along with visual data on regional incident distribution.

Key Outcomes

By utilizing these overviews and reports, ServiceNow customers can effectively monitor security incidents, prioritize their responses based on severity and SLA deadlines, and analyze trends over time. This leads to enhanced decision-making capabilities and improved incident management processes within their organizations.

The Security Incident Response Overview provides an executive view into security incident activity, providing trends and reports, and drill-downs into specific data.

The Overview module displays security incident information that is tailored to the role of the user. You can point to any part of a chart (bar, pie, data point, heatmap, and so on) to view general data specific to that part. See the following image. If you click any part of a report, a list opens to provide detailed information.

Security Incident Manager Overview

Users with the Security Incident Administrator and Security Incident Manager roles view the Security Incident Manager Overview. It contains the following reports in the base system.

Table 1. Security Incident Manager Overview reports
Name	Visual	Description
Team Critical Security Incidents	Single score	The number of critical security incidents assigned to the team.
Team High Security Incidents	Single score	The number of high security incidents assigned to the team.
SLAs expiring within 24 hours	Single score	The number of SLAs that expire within the next 24 hours.
Risk vs Severity	Heatmap	The distribution of security incidents assigned to the team by risk and severity.
Security Incidents by CI Class, last 3 months	Bar chart	The count of security incidents assigned to the team by configuration item class.
Trend of All Security Incidents	Trend	Plots the count of the number of security incidents received by category or priority.
Unauthorized Access Security Incidents	Bar chart	Displays the types of security incident categories received over time.
Average Time to Contain	Single score	The average time it takes to contain all security incidents.
Average Time to Contain Critical	Single score	The average time it takes to contain all critical security incidents.
Average Time to Identity	Single score	The average time it takes to identify all security incidents.

Security Analyst Overview

Users with the Security Incident Analyst role view the Security Analyst Overview. It contains the following reports in the base system.

Table 2. Security Analyst Overview reports
Name	Visual	Description
My Critical Priority Work	Single score	The number of critical security incidents assigned to me.
My High Priority Work	Single score	The number of high security incidents assigned to me.
My SLAs expiring within 24 hours	Single score	The number of SLAs assigned to me that expire within the next 24 hours.
Security Incidents assigned to me	Bar chart	Security Incidents assigned to me by incident state or category.
Work assigned to me by Type	Bar chart	Security tasks (incidents, tasks, or requests) assigned to me by type or priority.
Security Incidents, Requests, Tasks assigned to me	List	A list of all security incidents, security requests, and tasks assigned to me.
Security Incident Location	Map	Regional location of the security incidents.
Count	Map	Number of security incidents per region.
Min/Max Count	Color Spectrum Bar	The minimum and maximum numbers of security incidents per region represented by a color spectrum bar.
Percentage of Count	Map	Percentage of the total incident count per region.

Security Incident CISO Overview with Security Incident Analytics activated

When the Security Incident Analytics plugin is activated, users with the Security Incident CISO and System Administrator roles view the Security Incident CISO Overview. The following CISO reports are provided in the base system.

Table 3. Security Incident CISO Overview reports (with Security Incident Analytics activated)
Name	Visual	Description
New Security Incidents This Week	Single score	The number of new security incidents received in the current week.
Security Incidents Closed This Week	Single score	The number of security incidents closed in the current week.
New Security Incidents (Running 7 Days)	Single score	The number of security incidents opened within the last 7 days.
Security Incidents Closed (Running 7 Days)	Single score	The number of security incidents closed within the last 7 days.
Daily New Security Incidents vs Closed Security Incidents	Trend	New and Closed security incident counts over time by day.
Weekly New Security Incidents vs Closed Security Incidents	Trend	New and Closed security incidents over time by week.
Security Incident Close Code	Trend	Full count of closure codes over time.
Security Incident Business Impact	Treemap	Business services with security incidents with available groupings by business criticality.
Average Time to Contain (Weekly)	Trend	The 7-day average time it takes to contain a security incident over time.
Average Time to Eradicate (Weekly)	Trend	The 7-day average time it takes to eradicate a security incident over time.
Average Time to Identity (Weekly)	Trend	The 7-day average time it takes to identify a security incident over time.
Security Incident Location	Map	Regional location of the security incidents.
Count	Map	Number of security incidents per region.
Min/Max Count	Color Spectrum Bar	The minimum and maximum numbers of security incidents per region represented by a color spectrum bar.
Percentage of Count	Map	Percentage of the total incident count per region.

Security Incident CISO Overview without Security Incident Analytics activated

When the Security Incident Analytics plugin is not activated, users with the Security Incident CISO and System Administrator roles view the Security Incident CISO Reporting Overview. The following CISO reports are provided in the base system.

Table 4. Security Incident CISO Overview reports (without Security Incident Analytics activated)
Name	Visual	Description
New Security Incidents This Week	Single score	The number of new security incidents opened in the current week.
Security Incidents Closed This Week	Single score	The number of security incidents closed in the current week.
New Security Incidents (Running 7 Days)	Single score	The number of security incidents opened within the last 7 days.
Security Incidents Closed (Running 7 Days)	Single score	The number of security incidents closed within the last 7 days.
Weekly New Security Incidents	Trend	The new security incidents opened on a weekly basis.
Weekly Closed Security Incidents	Trend	The security incidents closed on a weekly basis.
Security Incident Close Codes	Trend	Security incident close codes over time.
Business Services with Security Incidents - Business Impact	Treemap	Business services with security incidents with available groupings by business criticality.
Average Time to Contain	Single score	The average time it takes to contain all security incidents.
Average Time to Contain Critical	Single score	The average time it takes to contain all critical security incidents.
Average Time to Identity	Single score	The average time it takes to identify all security incidents.

Note:

The Security Incident Response base system includes Performance Analytics Solutions for displaying preconfigured best practice dashboards. The dashboards present important metrics for analyzing your Security Incident Response process, such as new security incidents or the average age of open security incidents. For more information and installation instructions, see Security Incident Response Platform Analytics Solutions.