What Is an Incident Response Plan?

An incident response plan assigns responsibilities and lists procedures to follow if an event such as a breach were to occur. Having a plan put in place to handle cybersecurity incidents at your business can aid your business in identifying when a cyber attack is taking place, how to clean up the mess that an attack leaves and prevent an attack from happening again. Read on to learn why an incident response plan is needed, incidents that require response plans and more. 

Why an Incident Response Plan is Needed

As humans, our first instinct when something goes wrong is to panic, which is exactly what you don’t want to happen when an incident occurs in your business. An incident response plan is needed in any and every business because it minimizes the duration an incident lasts and the damage it causes. Furthermore, a plan allows your business to take total control of what’s going on without causing panic.

When an incident occurs, there should be a set of people put in place known as the Computer Security Incident Response Team (CSIRT) or similar, that have the skill sets and experience to handle cybersecurity incidents and know the procedures to follow in order to control and remediate them. 

Incidents That Would Require a Response Plan

There are an infinite amount of incidents that would require an incident response plan, making it essential to be prepared for anything. Listed below are a few cybersecurity incidents.

Data breaches

A data breach is when information is stolen from a system without authorization from, or knowledge of, the owner of the system. Data breaches that occur in businesses can be extremely severe and cause irreparable damage to the business’ reputation as well as financial losses. 

Data leaks

Data leaks occur when sensitive data is exposed on the internet accidentally. It’s important to note that data breaches and data leaks are not the same due to the fact that data leaks don’t require a cyber attack. A data leak will often occur because of poor data security training and practices that leave employees under-educated and more likely to accidentally expose information. .  

Man-in-the-middle attacks

A man-in-the-middle attack is when a cybercriminal intercepts data being sent between two businesses or people. Cybercriminals essentially act as middlemen between those receiving information and the ones receiving it. 

The above are just a few examples of incidents that can occur in a business and cause major damage – especially if there is no response plan in place. When an incident takes place in your business, you want to know how to handle it, who to put in charge, what resources and tools to utilize and more.

How to Create an Incident Response Plan

When creating an incident response plan, there are two frameworks that you can follow for industry standards. The two frameworks are the NIST Incident Response Process, which has 4 steps, and the SANS Incident Response Process, which has 6 steps. Although one has more steps than the other, they have the same general components. 

Here are 4 steps that should be in your incident response plan according to NIST’s Incident Response Process. 

1. Preparation 

This first step involves compiling a list of all your assets and ranking them by order of importance. This is also where you start creating the communication component of your response plan which gives your business guidance into who to contact, how and when to contact them based on the type of incident that it is. The employees included in the contact list should know their roles and what to do – this prevents confusion. 

This step is also when you begin to create your incident response plan for each different type of incident. As time goes on, your response plan should be constantly updated depending on security holes identified in the process or through improvements you uncover if your business were to experience an incident.

2. Detection and analysis

The second step in your plan covers when an incident occurs and has been detected. In this step, your incident response plan team should begin analyzing the incident and determining how it happened. By having the tools you need ready beforehand, the incident should be easy to analyze and be a quick process. 

3. Containment and eradication

The third step is doing exactly what it’s called, containing and eradicating the incident. Containment aims to patch up the threat’s entry point and prevent it from doing any more damage. Eradicating aims to remove the threat completely. Depending on the scope of the incident and how much entry the threat has gained, there may be more work to do than expected to eradicate it. 

4. Post-incident recovery 

The final step involves your business and employees learning from the experience so that in the future, your team is even more prepared to respond to an incident. Look at your incident from afar and see where your team could have done better and then add those areas of improvement to your incident response plan. 

It’s important to note that when it comes to creating an incident response plan, every employee on your team should be aware of it. This ensures that there’s no confusion about who’s in charge of what incident and lessens the panic about resolving the incident. 

Keep Your Business Safe

As much as it’s important to have a response plan for incidents, it’s equally as important to have employees learn the importance of cybersecurity to prevent incidents like these from happening altogether. Here are a few preventive tools and practices you can implement in your business to prevent incidents related to cybersecurity.

Implement Phishing Awareness Training

Phishing is becoming more common day by day and employees are often falling victim to phishing emails and texts. Phishing training can be extremely effective in educating employees on how to spot warning signs of phishing threats and the process of reporting them. 

Not only does phishing training aid employees in identifying phishing threats, but it’ll give your business a good sense of your organization’s security awareness knowledge so that you know what your employees are lacking and what they could use more training on. 

Get a Business Password Manager

A business password manager tool enables you and your employees to track, store, share, protect and manage all passwords. Passwords are stored in a secure cloud-based vault that can only be accessed with a master password. A password manager simplifies the process of your employee’s ability to generate strong, unique passwords for each of their accounts, all while storing them securely.

Password managers are crucial in keeping organizations secure along with simplifying how your organization tracks its employee’s passwords. Plus, they eliminate the need for employees to file help desk tickets for password resets. 

Always Keep Employees Informed 

One of the best ways to protect your business and employees from cyber threats and cyber attacks is by keeping them up to date on the latest cybersecurity news. Whether there’s news on a business that experienced a breach or news that phishing attacks are on the rise, make sure your employees are aware of what’s going on. Staying informed could make your employees more aware and vigilant in identifying attacks and threats.