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KSI-INR-AARGenerating After Action Reports

LOW
MODERATE

Formerly KSI-INR-03

>Control Description

Generate incident after action reports and persistently incorporate lessons learned.
Defined terms:
Incident
Persistently

>NIST 800-53 Controls

>Trust Center Components
3

Ways to express your implementation of this indicator — approaches vary by organization size, complexity, and data sensitivity.

From the field: Mature implementations express incident response capability through measurable metrics — KSI failure tracking with MTTR per indicator, IR exercise results with actual response times, and improvement implementation tracked as backlog items. Incident response becomes a continuously measured capability backed by SOAR platform data, not a static plan document.

Incident Response Plan Summary

Documents & Reports

IR plan summary expressing roles, escalation paths, and communication procedures — backed by SOAR platform workflows

Incident History and Lessons Learned

Evidence Artifacts

Anonymized incident summaries expressing response effectiveness and improvements — evidence of a learning organization

Manual: Auditor reviews incident post-mortems for completeness and improvement tracking

IR Tabletop Exercise Reports

Evidence Artifacts

IR exercise results with actual vs. expected response times and improvement findings

>Programmatic Queries

Beta
CI/CD

CLI Commands

List postmortem issues
gh issue list --label postmortem --state all --json number,title,state,createdAt --limit 20
View postmortem details
gh issue view <number> --json title,body,labels,createdAt

>20x Assessment Focus Areas

Aligned with FedRAMP 20x Phase Two assessment methodology

Completeness & Coverage:

  • Are after action reports generated for all incident types — security breaches, service outages, near-misses, and third-party incidents that affected your CSO?
  • Do AARs cover all phases of incident handling — detection, containment, eradication, recovery, and communication — or only selected phases?
  • How do you ensure lessons learned address root causes, not just symptoms, and that systemic issues across multiple incidents are identified?
  • Are lessons learned from AARs shared with all relevant teams (engineering, security, operations, leadership), not just the incident response team?

Automation & Validation:

  • How do you track that remediation actions identified in AARs are actually implemented — not just documented — and within what timeframe?
  • What automated tracking ensures AAR findings are assigned, prioritized, and closed with evidence of completion?
  • How do you validate that implemented improvements actually prevent recurrence — do you test through simulations or track recurrence rates?
  • What happens if an AAR remediation action is not completed by its deadline — what escalation triggers?

Inventory & Integration:

  • What platform manages AARs and their follow-up actions (Jira, ServiceNow, dedicated incident management tool)?
  • How do AAR findings integrate with your risk register, vulnerability management, and change management processes?
  • Are AAR templates standardized to ensure consistent coverage of root cause analysis, timeline, impact, and remediation actions?
  • How do lessons learned from AARs feed into training content, runbooks, and detection rule updates?

Continuous Evidence & Schedules:

  • How do you demonstrate that an AAR was completed for every qualifying incident over the past year?
  • Is AAR data (findings, remediation status, closure evidence) accessible via API or structured export for assessor review?
  • What evidence shows that lessons learned from past AARs have been persistently incorporated — not just documented but operationalized?
  • How do you measure whether AAR-driven improvements are reducing incident frequency or severity over time?

Update History

2026-02-04Removed italics and changed the ID as part of new standardization in v0.9.0-beta; no material changes.

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