Incidents are escalated or elevated as needed.
Also written as RS-MA-04, RS.MA-4, CSF 2.0 RS.MA-04, NIST CSF RS.MA.
RS.MA-04 is one of 13 subcategories in the Respond (RS) function, under the Incident Management category (RS.MA). The Core states: “Incidents are escalated or elevated as needed.” Respond outcomes are hard to evidence without incidents, so exercises and tabletop records carry the weight: they are what shows the capability exists before it is needed.
To demonstrate this outcome in an assessment or audit, gather artefacts such as:
RS.MA-04 has no direct one-to-one ISO 27001:2022 Annex A equivalent — it is a governance or process outcome that ISO 27001 addresses at the management-system level (Clauses 4–10) rather than through a specific Annex A control. Treat it as its own requirement in your CSF profile.
No. CSF 2.0 is a voluntary framework of outcomes rather than a set of requirements, and there is no certification against it. RS.MA-04 becomes binding only when something else makes it so — a contract, a regulator that references CSF, or your own Target Profile. That is the practical difference between CSF and an auditable standard like ISO 27001 or SOC 2.
Through profiles rather than pass/fail testing. You record how fully the outcome is achieved today in a Current Profile, state where it needs to be in a Target Profile, and the gap between them becomes your action plan. Implementation Tiers (Partial, Risk Informed, Repeatable, Adaptive) describe how rigorous your governance around the outcome is, not whether you have met it.
The Respond function is normally owned by the security or IT function, but RS.MA-04 still needs a specific named owner. Assessors treat an outcome with no owner as not achieved regardless of the tooling behind it, so record ownership in your profile alongside the assessment.