What is a Security Incident?
Definition
Event threatening the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of information or systems. Security incidents include malware infections, unauthorized access attempts, phishing attacks, data leaks, denial of service, and policy violations. Organizations use incident response procedures to detect, contain, investigate, and recover from incidents. Incident management includes documentation, root cause analysis, and continuous improvement to prevent recurrence.
Why This Matters
Security incidents range from minor policy violations to major breaches. Vendor incident response capabilities—detection, containment, investigation, recovery—determine impact severity. Organizations should evaluate vendor incident response plans, response time commitments, and customer notification procedures. Incident management maturity indicates overall security program effectiveness.
Related Terms
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Essential Connections
Incident Response
Security & Compliance
Structured approach to detecting, analyzing, containing, and recovering from security breaches including incident detection, assessment, containment, eradication, recovery, and post-incident review.
Security Breach
Security & Compliance
Unauthorized access to systems or data resulting in confidentiality, integrity, or availability compromise.
Data Security
Security & Compliance
Protection of information from unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction through encryption, access controls, monitoring, and security policies.
Security Controls
Security & Compliance
Technical and procedural safeguards implemented to protect data, systems, and infrastructure from unauthorized access, breaches, and threats.
Security Audit
Security & Compliance
Independent examination of security controls, policies, and practices verifying compliance with standards like SOC 2, ISO 27001, or industry regulations.
Disaster Recovery
Security & Compliance
Plans and procedures for restoring IT systems and data after catastrophic events including backup strategies, recovery time objectives, recovery point objectives, and business continuity plans.
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