The 72-Hour Clock: What Teams Need to Know About CIRCIA Incident Reporting Cybersecurity teams are used to moving fast. But with the arrival of CIRCIA, the clock now matters just as much as the incident itself.
If your organization operates in sectors like healthcare, finance, energy, transportation, or communications, these new CIRCIA reporting requirements may apply to you. Once suspicious activity is identified as a “substantial cyber incident,” the reporting clock starts ticking, and organizations may have as little as 72 hours to notify CISA.
So, What Exactly Is CIRCIA? CIRCIA stands for the Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act. The law requires certain organizations to report major cyber incidents and ransomware payments to the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). The idea is straightforward: The faster organizations share threat information, the faster other organizations can defend themselves. Instead of every company fighting cyber threats in isolation, CIRCIA is designed to improve collective defense across critical industries.