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Incident Response KPIs That Hide the Blast Radius

October 29, 2025 C-K9 Editorial

Fast closure metrics look good — until you realize nothing was actually contained.

Many organizations measure incident response by time-to-close. This incentivizes analysts to suppress alerts rather than investigate impact.

Common broken KPIs

  • Mean Time To Close (MTTC)
  • Alerts closed per analyst
  • Tickets resolved per day

None of these measure lateral movement, data access, or persistence.

Metrics that actually matter

  • Time to initial access discovery
  • Time to blast radius confirmation
  • Unexplained access duration

Split containment from investigation

Containment speed matters. Investigation depth matters more. Mixing them creates shallow response.