PlexTrac ConceptsMean Time to Respond (MTTR)

Mean time to respond (MTTR) is the average time it takes to react or address a security issue from the point of detection. Ideally, once a team is alerted of a vulnerability, issue, or breach, they respond with corrective actions as soon as possible to keep their MTTR low and mitigate any damage.

When talking about MTTR, it is important to note that people may use the abbreviation MTTR to refer to several cybersecurity metrics. The “R” in MTTR can refer to repair, recovery, resolve, or respond. Although similar, these metrics may have different implications for different teams.

A good mean time to respond (MTTR) can depend on the complexity of your infrastructure and the size of the IT team so it may be difficult to compare from organization to organization. However, there is an equation teams can use to calculate MTTR so they can determine a baseline to measure improvement. If you add up the total time spent resolving incidents in a given period and divide that by the total number of incidents, you would get the MTTR.

Or simply written:
MTTR = (Total Sum of Detection to Remediation Time) / (Total Number of Incidents)

No matter the size or maturity of a security team, reducing detection and remediation time is critical to improving security posture. With attacks increasing in number and sophistication, security teams must mitigate threats quickly to fortify their organization and keep it running as smoothly and efficiently as possible. An organization’s MTTR indicates how quickly it can react and resolve a system failure or incident.

Lower mean time to detect (MTTD) and MTTR means systems will be up and running quicker after an incident, resulting in efficient operations, better morale, and typically higher customer satisfaction. 

You can improve your mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR) by detecting and responding faster to incidents. Here are a few practices you can leverage to reduce your MTTD and MTTR times:

1. Create an incident response (IR) plan and conduct a thorough root cause analysis of any past incidents.
2. Implement comprehensive monitoring and proactive security testing using pentesting tools.
3. Leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to automate incident response processes.
4. Set up real-time alerts for anomalies and automate routine tasks.
5. Provide ongoing security training on the latest threats, tools, and best practices.

PlexTrac is built to empower security professionals to get the real security work done, reducing MTTR by enabling full visibility of the attack surface. PlexTrac is the perfect security platform to centralize all of your security findings, analyze the data, and collaborate on remediation.  

PlexTrac’s powerful Assessments module allows you to identify and manage risks within your organization. Additionally, PlexTrac supports importing scanner findings from external tools like Qualys, Nessus, and Nexpose directly into the platform, thereby aggregating data from internal and external sources into one all-encompassing ecosystem. The platform gives you a 360-degree view of your security posture, enabling your team to make analytics-backed decisions on remediation.

Book a demo with PlexTrac today to see our award-winning platform in action.

AI in Cybersecurity
Attack Surface Management (ASM)
Blue Teaming
Continuous Monitoring
CTEM (Continuous Threat Exposure Management)
Exposure Management
Incident Response (IR)
Mean Time to Detect (MTTD)
Mitigation
Remediation
Risk Assessment
Risk Prioritization
Threat Intelligence

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