IR-7(2): Coordination with External Providers

To meet the ir-7(2): coordination with external providers requirement, you must build and maintain a direct, cooperative working relationship between your incident response function and any third parties that provide system protection capabilities (for example, SOC/MDR, DDoS protection, EDR, cloud security tooling). Make it operational with named contacts, defined communication paths, and joint incident procedures backed by retained evidence. ¹

Key takeaways:

• Identify which third parties qualify as “external providers of system protection capability,” then assign an IR owner for each relationship.
• Document “how we work together during an incident” (contacts, escalation, data sharing, roles) and test it through real exercises or incident tickets.
• Keep evidence that coordination happens in practice: contact rosters, SLAs, runbooks, meeting notes, and incident timelines.

IR-7(2) is easy to describe and easy to fail in an assessment: you can have strong internal incident response, but if your critical protection providers are unreachable, slow to engage, or unclear on roles, the incident still goes sideways. NIST’s requirement is narrow and practical: establish a direct, cooperative relationship between your incident response capability and external providers of system protection capability. ¹

For most organizations, this is not a single document. It’s a set of working agreements and habits that prove you can rapidly coordinate with your SOC/MDR, EDR provider, cloud provider security team, DDoS/WAF provider, email security provider, and any managed firewall or managed identity provider that has hands on your protective controls. Coordination means you can reach the right people, exchange the right data, agree on who does what, and execute quickly under pressure.

This page gives requirement-level implementation guidance a CCO or GRC lead can put into motion: scope which third parties are in-bounds, define minimum coordination standards, build artifacts assessors will accept, and set an execution plan that fits normal operational constraints. ²

Regulatory text

Excerpt (IR-7(2)): “Establish a direct, cooperative relationship between its incident response capability and external providers of system protection capability; and” ¹

What the operator must do

You must be able to show, on demand, that:

1. Your incident response function has direct lines to protection providers (not a generic help desk queue).
2. The relationship is cooperative (shared procedures, agreed escalation, and evidence of coordination).
3. Coordination supports incident handling outcomes (speed of containment, access to logs/telemetry, ability to take protective actions).

This is a relationship control. Auditors will look for “who, how, and proof,” not aspirational policy statements. ¹

Plain-English interpretation

IR-7(2) requires you to treat key security service providers as part of your incident response ecosystem. If a third party runs or materially influences protective controls, your IR team must be able to coordinate with them quickly and predictably during an event.

“Direct” typically means: named contacts, agreed escalation channels, and a defined way to initiate emergency support. “Cooperative” typically means: shared expectations (roles, timelines, data sharing), coordination during incidents and exercises, and a process to resolve friction (for example, provider won’t share logs without an NDA, or cannot isolate a host without a formal ticket). ²

Who it applies to

Entity types

• Federal information systems and organizations implementing NIST SP 800-53 controls. ²
• Contractor systems handling federal data, where NIST SP 800-53 control baselines or customer requirements flow down. ²

Operational context (where IR-7(2) becomes “real”)

This requirement usually applies when you depend on third parties for:

• Managed detection and response (MDR) / SOC services
• Cloud security operations (CSP support, managed Kubernetes security, SIEM hosted service)
• Endpoint protection and managed EDR
• DDoS protection, WAF/CDN security, DNS security
• Email security gateways and anti-phishing services
• Managed firewalls, IDS/IPS, CASB/SSE providers

If a provider can detect, block, contain, restore, or produce evidence (logs, alerts, forensics) that you need during an incident, treat them as in-scope for IR-7(2). ¹

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

Step 1: Define “external system protection providers” for your environment

Create a scoped inventory with a short rationale per provider:

• Provider name and service
• What protective capability they provide (detect, prevent, contain, recover)
• Systems covered (production endpoints, email, cloud accounts)
• How to contact during a security incident (current state)

Practical scoping rule: if your IR plan assumes you can “ask someone to block/contain,” you need a named provider relationship for that step. ²

Step 2: Assign an internal owner and engagement model per provider

For each in-scope provider, assign:

• IR relationship owner (often IR lead, SOC manager, or SecOps manager)
• Contract/SLA owner (often Procurement/Vendor Management)
• Technical owner (tool admin)
• Backup owner (coverage during PTO)

Write down the engagement model:

• “Who can open a Severity 1 security incident with the provider?”
• “Who approves high-impact actions (account lock, network block, host isolation)?”
• “Who communicates externally (customer/regulator/PR) vs. who communicates with provider?” ¹

Step 3: Establish direct contact paths and escalation routes

Minimum expectation to operationalize “direct”:

• Named primary + backup contacts at provider (role-based where possible)
• 24/7 escalation method if you have 24/7 coverage needs (phone bridge, paging, emergency queue)
• Defined severity levels aligned to your IR severity model
• A pre-approved way to authenticate your team to the provider under stress (callbacks, PINs, pre-registered callers)

One common audit failure: the only “contact” is the account manager who is unavailable nights/weekends. Fix that with an operations-grade escalation path. ¹

Step 4: Document joint incident procedures (runbooks)

Create a short, provider-specific “IR coordination sheet” (one to two pages) that includes:

• What events require provider notification (ransomware, credential theft, DDoS)
• What data you will share (IOCs, affected assets, timestamps, tenant IDs)
• What data the provider will return (alerts, logs, triage notes, actions taken)
• What actions the provider can take without additional approval
• Time expectations (response, triage, containment assistance) as contract language permits

Keep it actionable. If it reads like a policy, it will not help during an incident and will not satisfy “cooperative” in practice. ²

Step 5: Align contracts and security terms to coordination needs

IR-7(2) is not “a contract control,” but contracts often block coordination if you don’t address:

• Incident notification obligations (who notifies whom, and how fast)
• Evidence access (logs, packet captures, alerts) and retention
• Forensics support and chain-of-custody expectations
• Subprocessor involvement (who else will see your data)
• Support boundaries (what the provider will and won’t do during active containment)

Your goal: remove procedural friction so coordination is predictable. ²

Step 6: Prove the relationship works (exercise or operational evidence)

Assessors prefer evidence of real coordination:

• Tabletop exercise including the provider (meeting notes, injects, action items)
• A test escalation ticket (opened, responded, closed with learnings)
• A real incident record showing provider engagement and actions taken

If you can’t include the provider in a tabletop, run a short “notification drill” that validates contact paths and captures outcomes. ¹

Step 7: Operational maintenance

Set a lightweight cadence:

• Refresh contact rosters when contracts renew, personnel changes occur, or services change
• Review runbooks when you change key tooling or architecture
• Track lessons learned from incidents and push updates to provider coordination sheets

Daydream (as a GRC system of record) fits here when you need repeatable evidence collection: control ownership, recurring tasks (contact roster refresh), and an audit-ready evidence package tied directly to IR-7(2). ²

Required evidence and artifacts to retain

Keep artifacts that show “direct,” “cooperative,” and “operational”:

Relationship and contacts

• Provider contact roster (primary/backup, after-hours escalation)
• Internal RACI for provider coordination
• Evidence of access paths (support portal roles, emergency phone numbers, pre-auth steps)

Procedures

• Provider-specific IR coordination sheets/runbooks
• Escalation criteria and severity mapping
• Data sharing checklist (what telemetry you provide, what you receive)

Proof of operation

• Exercise records involving provider (agenda, attendance, outcomes)
• Incident tickets/emails/bridge notes showing provider engagement
• Post-incident reviews with action items and closure evidence

Governance

• Contract excerpts relevant to incident support and notifications (as permitted)
• Third-party risk assessment notes linking the provider to incident response dependencies

Common exam/audit questions and hangups

Expect these, and pre-answer them in your evidence package:

1. Which third parties are “system protection capability” providers, and why?
2. Show me how you contact them during a Severity 1 incident.
3. Who is authorized to request containment actions?
4. Show evidence you tested coordination (not just documented it).
5. What happens if your primary contact is unavailable?
6. Do you have access to the logs/telemetry you need, in the timeframe you need? ¹

Hangup to anticipate: teams provide a generic vendor management policy. Auditors will ask for provider-specific operational artifacts that connect to incident handling. ²

Frequent implementation mistakes (and how to avoid them)

1. Mistake: Treating all vendors the same.
   Fix: Scope only providers that materially affect protection/detection/containment, then go deeper on those relationships. ²

2. Mistake: Relying on a sales/account manager path.
   Fix: Get operations-grade escalation, including after-hours, and test it. ¹

3. Mistake: No written “who does what” during an incident.
   Fix: Use a short RACI plus a runbook that maps actions (isolate host, block IP, rotate keys) to approvers and executors. ²

4. Mistake: Contracts block evidence sharing.
   Fix: Add incident support language, log access expectations, and forensics support terms during renewal; document compensating procedures until then. ²

5. Mistake: Evidence is scattered and non-repeatable.
   Fix: Centralize artifacts in a control folder or GRC system. Daydream is a practical place to map IR-7(2) to an owner, procedure, and recurring evidence tasks so you can answer audit requests quickly. ¹

Enforcement context and risk implications

No public enforcement cases were provided in the source catalog for this requirement, so you should treat IR-7(2) primarily as an assessment and operational resilience expectation under NIST SP 800-53. ²

Risk, in practice:

• Delayed containment because a provider is unreachable or slow to engage.
• Incomplete investigation because logs/telemetry access is unclear.
• Decision paralysis because no one knows who can authorize provider actions.
• Audit findings for missing implementation evidence, even if your tooling is strong. ¹

Practical 30/60/90-day execution plan

Days 0–30: Get to “direct contact + scope clarity”

• Build the in-scope provider list for system protection capabilities.
• Assign relationship owners and backups.
• Collect and validate incident escalation contacts for each provider.
• Create a single repository for IR-7(2) artifacts (folder structure or Daydream control record). ¹

Days 31–60: Make it “cooperative” with usable procedures

• Draft provider-specific IR coordination sheets/runbooks.
• Align severity mapping and notification triggers.
• Identify contract gaps that block coordination (logs, forensics, response paths) and open procurement/legal workstreams for amendments at renewal.
• Run a notification drill for at least one high-dependency provider and capture evidence. ²

Days 61–90: Prove operability and lock in governance

• Conduct a tabletop exercise including one or more providers (or run parallel drills where direct participation is not available).
• Update runbooks based on lessons learned and track closure.
• Implement a recurring review task for contacts/runbooks and evidence collection in Daydream (owner, frequency, and required artifacts). ¹

Frequently Asked Questions

Which third parties count as “external providers of system protection capability” for IR-7(2)?

Any third party that provides detection, prevention, containment, or security telemetry you depend on during incidents should be in scope. Start with MDR/SOC, cloud security-relevant providers, EDR, DDoS/WAF/CDN security, and managed network security services. ²

Does IR-7(2) require a formal contract clause, or is an operational runbook enough?

The requirement is about a “direct, cooperative relationship,” so you need operational coordination artifacts either way. Contract language becomes necessary when terms limit support, log access, notification, or forensics assistance. ¹

What evidence is strongest for an assessor?

Records that show real coordination: incident tickets with the provider, exercise artifacts, escalation drill outcomes, and provider-specific runbooks tied to named contacts. Policies alone rarely satisfy the “cooperative” expectation. ²

Our provider won’t join tabletops. How do we satisfy IR-7(2)?

Run a documented notification drill: validate the escalation path, confirm identity verification steps, and record response times and outcomes qualitatively. Keep the provider-specific coordination sheet and evidence that you tested contactability. ¹

How do we handle multiple providers (MDR + EDR + CSP) without creating paperwork sprawl?

Standardize a one-page coordination template and require only provider-specific deltas (contacts, actions, data exchange). Track ownership and recurring reviews in a single system of record such as Daydream. ²

What’s the cleanest way to map IR-7(2) into our control library?

Map IR-7(2) to a named owner, an implementation procedure (coordination sheets + escalation paths), and recurring evidence artifacts (drills, updates, tickets). That mapping is also the fastest path to audit readiness. ¹

Footnotes

1. NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 OSCAL JSON

2. NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5