RS.MA-02: Incident reports are triaged and validated

RS.MA-02 sits in the “Respond” function of NIST CSF 2.0 and targets a failure mode that drives real-world damage: organizations receive a report (from an endpoint alert, employee email, third party notice, customer complaint, or a SOC queue) but mishandle it. The result is predictable: missed containment windows, inconsistent escalations, incomplete regulatory notifications, and weak post-incident records.

For a Compliance Officer, CCO, or GRC lead, the fastest path to operationalizing RS.MA-02 is to treat triage and validation as a controlled business process with measurable outputs: a priority, an initial scope, an evidence-backed disposition (true incident, benign, duplicate, needs more info), and an escalation decision. Your job is to make sure security can execute this consistently and that the organization can prove it later.

This page gives requirement-level implementation guidance you can hand to an incident response leader, SOC manager, or IT operations head and then test during internal reviews. It includes step-by-step procedures, evidence to retain, and the audit questions that typically expose gaps. ¹

Regulatory text

Requirement (excerpt): “Incident reports are triaged and validated.” ²

Operator interpretation: You must run every incident report through a documented process that:

1. Triages the report (classifies it, sets priority/severity, and routes ownership), and
2. Validates the report (confirms whether it is credible, determines likely impact and scope, and records the basis for the decision).
   This is a control you can test. “We look at alerts” is not enough; you need defined criteria, accountable roles, and retained records that show consistent handling. ¹

Plain-English interpretation (what “triaged” and “validated” mean)

Triage answers: “How urgent is this, what is it, and who owns it right now?”
Typical triage outputs include category (phishing, malware, unauthorized access, data exposure), severity/priority, impacted service, and assigned responder/team.

Validation answers: “Is this real, what evidence supports that conclusion, and what is the likely scope?”
Validation should produce a disposition (confirmed incident, likely incident, false positive/benign, duplicate, informational) plus a short evidence summary (logs consulted, screenshots, alert details, user statements, third party notice). ¹

Who it applies to

Entities: Any organization operating a cybersecurity program and using NIST CSF 2.0 as a framework baseline. ¹

Operational context (where this control lives):

• Security operations / SOC (internal or outsourced)
• IT operations teams that receive security reports (service desk, messaging admins, IAM admins)
• Business units that receive reports first (fraud, customer support, privacy office)
• Third parties that generate incident notifications (cloud providers, MDR firms, software providers)

Key compliance point: Even if triage is performed by a third party (e.g., MDR/SOC provider), you still need governance, oversight, and evidence that triage/validation is happening and that your organization receives the outputs. This is a common exam hangup in outsourced models.

What you actually need to do (step-by-step)

1) Define “incident report” sources and required intake fields

Build a simple intake standard that covers:

• Sources: employee emails, hotline, SOC alerts, SIEM detections, EDR alerts, third party notifications, customer complaints, vulnerability disclosures
• Minimum fields: reporter, time received, system/app, description, indicators (IPs/domains/hashes), attachments, business impact hints, confidentiality marking

Practical tip: If your service desk tool is the front door, enforce required fields with ticket templates. If email is the front door, use a monitored mailbox that auto-creates tickets.

2) Establish a triage decision tree and routing rules

Create a one-page triage guide that answers:

• What categories do you use (keep it short and usable)?
• What makes something “high priority” (examples, not philosophy)?
• Who is on point after hours?
• What events must be escalated to the incident commander, privacy, legal, or communications?

Deliverable: “Triage Matrix” (category × severity × required actions). Keep it stable; update via change control when patterns shift. ¹

3) Separate triage from validation, but don’t separate ownership

In practice, the same analyst often does both steps. The control objective is that both happen and are recorded distinctly:

• Triage record: initial classification, priority, assignment, initial timeline
• Validation record: evidence checked, hypothesis, scope assessment, disposition, escalation decision

Why auditors care: It shows you did more than label it “P1” and walk away. Validation supports defensible containment, notification decisions, and lessons learned. ¹

4) Set validation standards: what evidence is “enough” at this stage

Define a minimum validation checklist by incident type. Examples:

• Phishing report: review headers/URLs, check email gateway logs, verify whether user clicked, confirm credential use in IdP logs
• Endpoint malware alert: confirm process tree, check EDR telemetry, verify if file executed, determine persistence indicators
• Unauthorized access: review authentication logs, geo/anomaly context, privilege changes, affected accounts, suspicious sessions
• Data exposure report: confirm storage permissions, access logs, data classification, whether data was actually accessed

Operational rule: Validation should produce a written “basis for decision” even if the answer is “false positive.” That text becomes your defensible record later.

5) Implement triage SLAs as internal expectations (not as unsupported “requirements”)

Set internal targets for:

• Acknowledgement time
• Initial triage completion time
• Validation completion time for top priorities

You do not need to publish these externally. You do need to be consistent and able to show performance metrics and exceptions with reasons.

6) Create a quality loop: tuning, duplicates, and false-positive management

RS.MA-02 is fragile without hygiene:

• Track false positives by detection rule or source
• Track duplicate reports (same event from SIEM + employee email)
• Feed outcomes to detection engineering and awareness training

Evidence-friendly output: a monthly triage QA report with top drivers of noise and actions taken.

7) Assign control ownership and recurring evidence collection

For audit readiness, name:

• Control owner: SOC manager / Head of Incident Response
• Compliance owner: GRC lead
• Evidence owner: operations analyst or IR program manager

Then schedule recurring evidence pulls. A lightweight option is to sample closed tickets and capture the required fields and timestamps. This maps cleanly to the recommended control of linking the requirement to policy, procedure, owner, and recurring evidence collection. ²

Required evidence and artifacts to retain

Keep evidence in a way you can export without heroic effort:

Core artifacts (auditors ask for these first):

• Incident response policy and procedure covering triage and validation steps ¹
• Triage matrix / severity definitions and routing rules
• Ticketing/IR platform records showing:
  • time received, time triaged, time validated
  • category and severity
  • assignment history
  • validation notes and disposition
  • escalation and communications log (if applicable)
• On-call rota and escalation contacts (if used)
• Sampled case files for multiple incident types

Supporting artifacts (helps when controls are challenged):

• Training records for triage analysts and incident commanders
• Detection tuning records tied to false positives and duplicates
• Post-incident reviews showing improvements to triage/validation criteria

Common exam/audit questions and hangups

1. “Show me how you decide severity.” Expect follow-ups on consistency across teams and shifts.
2. “How do you validate before declaring an incident?” They want evidence checked, not gut feel.
3. “What happens when a third party reports an incident?” They will test intake, triage, and validation of third-party notices.
4. “Prove this is operational.” Policies are not enough; you need recent tickets with complete fields.
5. “How do you prevent missed reports?” They will look for a single system of record and monitored channels.

Frequent implementation mistakes (and how to avoid them)

• Mistake: Alerts treated as triage, with no validation notes.
  Fix: Require a disposition and evidence summary field before closure.

• Mistake: Severity is subjective and changes by analyst.
  Fix: Define severity drivers (data sensitivity, system criticality, privilege level, spread potential) in the triage matrix.

• Mistake: Outsourced SOC provides summaries, not case records.
  Fix: Contractually require exportable ticket data and validation rationale for significant events; test this during QBRs.

• Mistake: No linkage between duplicates.
  Fix: Use a “parent incident” mechanism and require duplicate tagging to keep one validated record.

• Mistake: Validation delayed until after containment.
  Fix: For high-risk events, validate in parallel: confirm reality and scope while containment begins, then update the record.

Enforcement context and risk implications

NIST CSF is a framework, not a regulator. The risk is indirect but real: if you cannot prove you triaged and validated reports, you will struggle to defend incident handling decisions, timelines, and notifications during customer audits, insurer inquiries, or regulatory exams that reference recognized practices. Weak triage also increases operational risk: missed true positives and noisy queues that bury the signals you need.

Practical 30/60/90-day execution plan

First 30 days (stabilize intake and records)

• Identify all incident report intake paths; consolidate to a system of record where possible.
• Publish severity definitions and a triage matrix in a one-page format.
• Add required ticket fields for validation notes, disposition, and evidence checked.
• Start a weekly sample review of closed cases for completeness against RS.MA-02. ¹

Next 60 days (make it consistent and testable)

• Train SOC/IR staff and service desk on triage categories and routing.
• Build escalation rules for privacy/legal/comms and document handoffs.
• Establish a QA loop: false positives, duplicates, and tuning requests.
• Run a tabletop focused on “report received → triage → validate → escalate” and capture improvements. ¹

By 90 days (make it auditable and sustainable)

• Formalize control ownership and recurring evidence collection.
• Define and review internal triage performance metrics and exception handling.
• Validate third-party involvement: confirm your MDR/SOC contract and reporting deliver the artifacts you need.
• Centralize reporting for leadership: trends, top sources, time-to-triage bottlenecks, and remediation actions.

Where Daydream fits: If you struggle to keep evidence collection consistent across tools and teams, Daydream can map RS.MA-02 to an owner, required artifacts, and a recurring evidence checklist so audits become a routine export, not a fire drill.

Frequently Asked Questions

What counts as an “incident report” for RS.MA-02?

Treat any claim or signal of a potential security event as an incident report, even if it later proves benign. Include third-party notifications, employee phishing reports, SIEM/EDR alerts, and customer complaints.

Do we have to validate every single alert?

You need validation appropriate to the report’s priority and credibility. For low-quality noise, validation may be quick, but the record still needs a disposition and the basis for closing it. ¹

Can a third party (MDR/SOC) do triage and validation for us?

Yes, but you still need oversight and evidence. Require exportable case records that show triage decisions, validation steps, and dispositions so you can demonstrate operation during audits.

What’s the minimum auditors will accept as “validation” evidence?

A short written rationale tied to observable artifacts (alerts, logs reviewed, user statements, screenshots) and a clear disposition. If it’s a false positive, record what you checked and why you closed it.

How do we handle duplicate reports from multiple sources?

Create one parent incident and link duplicates to it. The validated record should live on the parent, with duplicate tags showing consolidation and preventing split investigations.

How do we prove RS.MA-02 is working without sharing sensitive incident details?

Use redacted ticket exports, metadata (timestamps, categories, dispositions), and anonymized validation summaries. Keep unredacted evidence in restricted repositories with access logs.

Footnotes

1. NIST CSWP 29

2. NIST CSWP 29; NIST CSF 1.1 to 2.0 Core Transition Changes