What is a playbook in cybersecurity?

A playbook in cybersecurity is fundamentally a guide for incident detection and response. It outlines predefined procedures and actions that cybersecurity teams should follow when responding to various types of security incidents. By providing structured and standardized responses, playbooks help organizations react efficiently and effectively to security threats, thereby minimizing potential damage and ensuring a swift return to normal operations.

These documents are crucial for ensuring that all team members are aware of their roles during an incident and can follow a consistent approach to identify, assess, and mitigate security incidents. Playbooks typically include incident classification, notification procedures, containment strategies, eradication steps, and recovery processes, making them integral to an organization's overall security posture.

The other options touch on different aspects of cybersecurity but do not accurately define what a playbook is. Automated scripts serve a different purpose, focusing on automation rather than structured incident response. Monitoring system applications relate more to oversight and vigilance than to a systematic incident response framework. Finally, a checklist for system performance optimization aims to enhance operational efficiency, which is distinct from the specific focus of a playbook on managing security incidents.