Incident response playbook
An incident response playbook is an actionable guide to the decisions, responsibilities, and tasks for handling a particular type of security incident.
A broad response plan establishes how the organization manages incidents. A playbook makes that direction usable for a situation such as suspected account compromise or a malicious email report. NIST describes playbooks as actionable tasks for particular scenarios; Microsoft’s examples organize investigation steps around specific threats.
Give each step an owner
“Notify IT” leaves too much to work out during an incident. Name the responsible function, the information it needs, the actions it can authorize, and what to do if that route is unavailable. The channel-handoff article explains how context can be lost as a suspicious interaction moves between teams.
For identity incidents, separate account changes, session handling, application permissions, and recovery checks. The containment review gives those decisions more detail. Adapt them to the services and authority your team actually has.
A playbook is not necessarily automation
Some products call automated workflows playbooks. SOAR can execute parts of a response, but a written guide can also direct human work. State which steps run automatically and which require approval.
A tabletop exercise can reveal missing owners or unclear decisions before a live incident. Test the operational handoffs too: SOC scenario visibility follows collection, notification, and acknowledgement separately. Update the guide when those checks expose a broken contact, missing permission, or action that cannot be completed as written.