US Cybersecurity Agency CISA Had to Build Its Incident Playbook During the Incident, Agency Reveals

The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has disclosed that it was forced to create its incident response playbook while actively responding to a security breach. The revelation follows a report by independent cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs in May, who detailed how a security researcher from the firm GitGuardian alerted him to a trove of exposed passwords stored in a publicly accessible GitHub repository. The repository belonged to an employee of a CISA contractor, leading to the exposure of sensitive credentials. CISA's admission highlights the challenges of managing cybersecurity incidents when established protocols are lacking, underscoring the need for proactive planning in government agencies.