Defining Service Level Agreements (SLAs)

A CSIRT needs measurable time commitments so the rest of the organization knows what to expect from it. Typical SLAs define the maximum time to acknowledge an alert, the time to first response and the estimated time to containment, usually differentiated by incident severity: active ransomware can't have the same deadline as an automatically blocked phishing attempt. These agreements must be realistic for the team's real capacity, and reviewed periodically with data from past incidents instead of being set arbitrarily. Publishing the SLAs to the business also helps manage expectations and justify additional investment in staff or tools when the volume of incidents exceeds installed capacity.