A Visualization Method for Management of Incident Response Exercises Cycles

Even if there are measures in place against various abnormal conditions and cyber-attacks, it is unrealistic to assume that all incidents can be prevented. Therefore, an incident response should also be planned assuming that an incident will occur. Furthermore, to prevent incidents from leading to undesirable effects such as unsafe conditions, the incident response capabilities of organizations and their personnel must be continuously strengthened. The Plan, Do, Check, Act (PDCA) cycle should be implemented to strengthen resilience so that recovery can be carried out quickly to ensure business continuity. Therefore, incident response exercises for organizations and their personnel in order to practice making appropriate situational judgments and responding accordingly. This study focuses on both individual incident response exercises as well as the continuous exercises of their management. While it is necessary to keep up with changes in various underlying conditions, managing the incident response exercise cycle can be challenging, given the frequency with which incident response exercises are conducted, the absence or replacement of dedicated personnel, and intermittent incident response exercise cycles. This paper presents a visualization method for managing the incident response exercise cycle to mitigate such issues.