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Mean Time to Resolution

(also Incident Resolution Time)

Mean Time to Resolution definition

In cybersecurity, mean time to resolution (MTTR) refers to the time it takes to identify a security incident or data breach after the initial detection. MTTR is a key performance metric for efficiently managing incident response processes. It facilitates organizations in knowing their ability to minimize the impact of overall security and return to daily operations swiftly.

See also: Cyber incident response plan

Common MTTR applications:

Incident handling process improvement: By optimizing MTTR, organizations, and companies can identify the bottlenecks and least efficient processes, thus improving their incident response workflows.

Incident response effectiveness assessment: Mean time to resolution provides observations and insights into how long it takes security teams to identify and mitigate security incidents. MTTR helps organizations to fine-tune their processes and incident response strategies.

Compliance and accountability demonstration: MTTR metrics can be applied to showcase an organization's commitment to timely incident resolution, which is usually required for regulatory compliance.