IR-10: Integrated Information Security Analysis Team

To meet the ir-10: integrated information security analysis team requirement, you must stand up (or formally designate) an integrated team that brings together security operations, incident response, and threat analysis so incidents and emerging threats are analyzed consistently, quickly, and with clear ownership. Operationalize IR-10 by defining the team’s charter, roles, workflows, and evidence so an assessor can see it runs in practice. ¹

Key takeaways:

• IR-10 is about a named, cross-functional analysis capability, not a vague “we collaborate” statement. ¹
• Auditors will look for repeatable workflows and records: membership, meeting cadence, case handling, and outputs. ²
• The fastest path is to map IR-10 to a control owner, procedure, and recurring evidence artifacts you can produce on demand. ²

IR-10 sits in the Incident Response (IR) control family, but it’s really an operating-model requirement: you need a functioning, integrated information security analysis team that can connect detection, triage, investigation, and lessons learned across tooling and organizational silos. If you already have a SOC, an incident response function, and threat intelligence, IR-10 forces you to prove they operate as one analysis capability when it matters.

For a Compliance Officer, CCO, or GRC lead, the fastest way to get value from IR-10 is to treat it like a “named team + defined workflow + retained evidence” control. Your goal is not to build a new department; it’s to make integration auditable: clear membership, clear triggers for engagement, a single way to document analytic decisions, and routine outputs that show the team is active.

This page gives requirement-level implementation guidance you can hand to operators. It prioritizes what assessors typically challenge: ambiguous ownership, ad hoc collaboration, and missing artifacts. All guidance ties back to NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5 control IR-10. ¹

Regulatory text

Control requirement: “NIST SP 800-53 control IR-10.” ²

Operator interpretation: NIST expects you to implement IR-10 as a documented capability for integrated analysis during security events. That means you can show (1) who performs cross-functional analysis, (2) how they coordinate, (3) what they produce, and (4) that it happens repeatedly, not only during a major incident. ¹

Because the provided excerpt is brief, your operational objective is assessment-ready clarity: define the integrated analysis team’s scope, authority, interfaces, and evidence trail so IR-10 can be tested. ²

Plain-English interpretation (what IR-10 means)

IR-10 requires an integrated information security analysis team: a coordinated group (internal, external, or hybrid) that analyzes security signals and incidents end-to-end. “Integrated” means the analysis function is not fragmented across email threads and tool-specific notes. It has a shared process for triage and investigation, shared criteria for severity and escalation, and shared documentation outputs.

If you already run incident response, IR-10 is the “prove you can analyze coherently” layer. If you don’t, IR-10 becomes the forcing function to create one accountable analysis path that links detection (SOC), investigation (IR), engineering (IT/Cloud/AppSec), and governance (GRC/Legal/Privacy) when needed. ¹

Who it applies to

IR-10 is commonly applied in:

• Federal information systems (agency-operated environments) ²
• Contractor systems handling federal data (including service providers supporting federal missions) ²

Operational contexts where IR-10 tends to be “make or break” in an assessment:

• You outsource key security operations (MSSP/SOC-as-a-service) and need to prove integration between the provider and your internal responders.
• You have multiple security teams (cloud, endpoint, network, product security) and incidents cross boundaries.
• You have regulated reporting obligations (contractual, agency, or program-driven) that depend on consistent severity and root cause analysis.

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

Use this as a build sheet. Your output is an auditable control implementation, not a slide deck.

1) Assign ownership and define the control boundary

• Name a control owner (role title, not a person) accountable for IR-10 operation and evidence collection.
• Define the system/program scope (which environments, business units, subsidiaries, and third parties are in scope).
• Confirm interfaces with SOC/IR/threat intel functions if they are separate teams.

Deliverable: IR-10 control record showing owner, scope, and in-scope systems. ²

2) Create an Integrated Analysis Team charter

Write a short charter that answers:

• Purpose: integrated analysis for incidents and significant security events.
• Authority: who can declare an incident, request logs, and require participation.
• Membership: required roles (SOC lead, IR lead, threat analyst, forensics, cloud/platform, app owner) and alternates.
• Engagement triggers: severity thresholds, categories (ransomware, credential compromise, data exposure), or high-confidence alerts.
• Decision rights: who owns severity, containment recommendations, and “close” decisions.

Deliverable: “Integrated Information Security Analysis Team Charter” approved by security leadership. ¹

3) Define the operating workflow (make it testable)

Document the workflow in a way an auditor can trace:

Minimum workflow states

1. Intake / signal triage
2. Case creation and ownership assignment
3. Evidence collection and correlation (logs, EDR, cloud audit, identity events)
4. Hypothesis and scoping (what happened, what’s impacted)
5. Containment recommendations and tracking
6. Root cause analysis and lessons learned
7. Closure criteria and post-incident follow-up

Practical control language to include:

• “All in-scope incidents have a single case record with linked evidence.”
• “Integrated analysis includes at least one representative from detection and one from response for defined severity levels.”
• “Findings are recorded as analytic notes and mapped to incident timeline.”

Deliverable: IR-10 procedure (runbook) with workflow, roles, and required fields. ¹

4) Integrate tools and records (don’t boil the ocean)

IR-10 does not require a specific tool, but you need consistent records. Pick one “system of record” for cases (ticketing, IR platform, or GRC workflow) and define:

• Required case fields (severity, category, affected assets, timestamps, participants, decisions, evidence links).
• Where evidence lives (SIEM queries, EDR snapshots, cloud logs) and how it is referenced.
• How you preserve artifacts (access controls, retention, immutability where feasible).

Deliverable: Case template + evidence-linking standard. ²

5) Set a cadence that produces recurring evidence

To make IR-10 auditable, run recurring activities such as:

• Regular case review / threat review meeting with minutes
• Trend analysis (recurring incident types, control gaps, detection tuning needs)
• Post-incident review tracking (action items, owners, due dates)

Deliverable: calendar invites, agendas, minutes, and a backlog of follow-ups tied to cases. ¹

6) Prove integration with third parties (if applicable)

If a third party operates detection or hosts systems:

• Define how the provider escalates to your integrated team.
• Require provider participation in investigations for specified event classes.
• Ensure you receive and retain investigation artifacts (provider tickets, logs, timelines) in your system of record.

Deliverable: contract/SOW language excerpts, escalation matrix, and sample joint-case records (redacted). ¹

7) Map IR-10 to evidence artifacts (assessment-ready packaging)

Turn IR-10 into an evidence checklist an assessor can validate quickly. A simple way is to map:

• Control owner
• Implementation procedure
• Recurring evidence artifacts

This mapping is explicitly recommended as a practical control approach. ²

If you use Daydream, this is where it fits cleanly: maintain the control record, attach the charter/runbook/templates, and schedule recurring evidence requests so IR-10 doesn’t become a scramble before an assessment. ²

Required evidence and artifacts to retain

Keep artifacts that show design and operation:

Design evidence (what you intended to do)

• Integrated Analysis Team Charter (approved)
• IR-10 procedure/runbook (versioned)
• RACI or role matrix for triage, investigation, communications, closure
• Case template with required fields
• Evidence retention and access approach (where artifacts are stored and who can access)

Operating evidence (what you actually did)

• Case records showing cross-functional participation (redacted)
• Meeting agendas/minutes for integrated analysis reviews
• Post-incident reviews and action-item tracking
• Examples of correlated evidence (SIEM query links, EDR telemetry references, cloud audit logs references)
• Escalation/notification logs (timestamps, participants)

Common exam/audit questions and hangups

Expect these questions, and pre-answer them in your artifacts:

• “Who is on the integrated analysis team, and how do you ensure coverage if someone is out?”
• “Show me a recent incident where multiple teams participated. Where is that documented?”
• “Where do you document analytic decisions and severity changes?”
• “How do you ensure third-party-run monitoring feeds into your incident analysis?”
• “How do lessons learned feed back into controls, detections, or engineering backlog?” ¹

Typical hangup: teams produce good investigations but cannot produce a clean record that shows integration. Solve that with a single case record standard and required fields.

Frequent implementation mistakes (and how to avoid them)

• Mistake: Charter exists, but no operational cadence.
  Fix: require recurring review outputs (minutes, backlog updates) and store them with IR-10 evidence.
• Mistake: “Integration” is implied, not documented.
  Fix: mandate participant fields and decision logs in every material case; require cross-functional participation criteria.
• Mistake: MSSP/SOC provider work is not retained.
  Fix: contractually require investigation artifacts and ticket exports; attach them to internal cases.
• Mistake: No clear decision rights.
  Fix: write explicit authority for severity, containment, and closure in the charter.

Enforcement context and risk implications

No public enforcement cases were provided in the source catalog for this requirement, so this page does not cite enforcement outcomes. ²

Practically, weak IR-10 implementation increases operational risk: fragmented investigations, slower containment decisions, inconsistent severity, and gaps in lessons learned. Those become assessment findings because you cannot prove the incident analysis function works as a system. ¹

Practical 30/60/90-day execution plan

First 30 days (stand up the minimum viable control)

• Assign IR-10 control owner and scope.
• Draft and approve the team charter.
• Pick the case system of record and publish the case template.
• Write the runbook with workflow states and required documentation fields.
• Run one tabletop or case walkthrough and capture minutes.

Days 31–60 (make it repeatable and testable)

• Start recurring integrated analysis reviews; store agendas/minutes.
• Train responders and partner teams on case documentation expectations.
• Add third-party escalation paths and evidence intake steps where needed.
• Validate access to required logs and evidence sources for investigations.

Days 61–90 (prove operational maturity)

• Produce trend and lessons-learned outputs that tie to detection tuning and remediation backlog.
• Test handoffs across teams (SOC to IR; IR to engineering; engineering to closure verification).
• Perform an internal mini-assessment: sample recent cases and verify required fields, participants, and evidence links.
• Package IR-10 evidence in a single folder/register (Daydream or your GRC repository) for assessor-ready retrieval. ²

Frequently Asked Questions

Do we need a dedicated “IR-10 team,” or can we designate existing staff?

You can designate existing SOC/IR/threat roles if you document the integrated team charter, engagement triggers, and decision rights. Assessors care that integration is explicit and evidenced. ¹

What’s the minimum evidence to pass an assessment for IR-10?

A signed charter, a runbook with workflow and roles, and multiple real case records showing cross-functional analysis with retained artifacts are the typical minimum. If cases are sensitive, provide redacted samples plus a walkthrough. ¹

We use an MSSP for monitoring. How do we show “integrated” analysis?

Define escalation and joint-investigation steps, require provider artifacts (tickets, timelines, relevant log extracts), and attach them to your internal case record. Integration must be visible in your system of record. ¹

Does IR-10 require threat intelligence?

IR-10 focuses on integrated analysis capability; threat intelligence can be one input, but the requirement is satisfied by a documented, functioning analysis process across relevant teams. Show how you correlate and document findings. ¹

How do we handle separation of duties between investigators and approvers?

Use explicit decision rights in the charter and require review/approval fields for closure and post-incident actions. Keep the workflow simple but auditable: investigator documents, designated approver signs off. ¹

How does a GRC team operationalize IR-10 without owning incident response?

Own the control record, define required artifacts and cadence with Security, and run evidence collection and spot checks. Daydream-style control mapping helps by tying IR-10 to an owner, procedure, and recurring evidence requests. ²

Footnotes

1. NIST SP 800-53 Rev. 5

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