Incident Response

Definition

Incident response is the organized handling of security incidents, including detection, response and recovery within ongoing risk management.

An AI-related incident may involve incorrect output, unauthorized action, data exposure or a failing dependency. Decide how those possibilities enter the organization’s existing response process and who can contain the affected workflow.

What it covers

Detection

Recognize an event and assess its scope.

Containment

Stop further unwanted effects.

Recovery

Restore operation with reviewed changes.

Distinguish stopping new actions, withdrawing access, preserving evidence and restoring service. Some downstream effects may need correction after the agent itself has been stopped.

In practice

Practical design patterns by Min.

• Name an on-call owner and escalation route.
• Prepare task cancellation and credential revocation.
• Preserve relevant evidence while protecting sensitive records.

Prepare role-specific runbooks with detection signals, containment actions, evidence locations and escalation contacts. Exercise the response path before relying on it.

After containment, identify affected tasks and resources, validate recovery and feed findings into inventory, policy and evaluation updates.

Working example

Why the controls matter

If an agent exports documents to an unauthorized destination, stop further exports, withdraw its relevant access and preserve task records. Review which documents were actually transmitted before deciding recovery and communication actions.

Common pitfalls

• No owner outside business hours.
• Restarting an agent without addressing the underlying grant.

Restarting the model can restore availability without addressing the compromised credential or policy gap. Confirm the cause and remaining exposure.

Questions for operational review

Use these questions to decide what evidence your team needs. They are editorial prompts, not a compliance checklist.

• Who can contain the workflow now?
• Which downstream effects remain?
• What evidence supports safe recovery?