What Is an Incident Response Plan and Why You Need One?

Incident response is how a company deals with a cyber attack or a security incident. It is a planned way to handle the problem, which helps a business get back to normal as fast as possible. This is a key part of protecting a company from cyber threats.

An “event” is any action on a network. An “alert” is a notice that a system sends out when an event seems suspicious. An “incident” is when a group of alerts show a real cyber threat that needs to be fixed right away.

The main point of an incident response plan is to give a company clear steps to follow when a data breach happens. This plan helps to lower the harm, cut down on recovery time, and keep everyone calm during a stressful situation.

An incident response plan is a security policy that deals with a security incident like a data breach. A business continuity plan is a larger plan to keep a company running during any major problem, like a storm or a power outage. A disaster recovery plan is a part of the business continuity plan that focuses on getting IT systems back online.

Incident response starts with a credible alert from a system that watches for problems. A team then works to find the cyber threat, stop it from spreading, and get it out of the network. After that, the team works on getting systems back to normal and then looks back to see what they can do better next time.

Common security incidents include phishing attacks, which trick people into giving away private information. Malware, such as ransomware, can infect computers. Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks can slow a network to a crawl. And sometimes, a person may get into a system without permission.

The person in charge of making an incident response plan is a team that works across different departments. For small businesses, this team might include the business owner, lawyers, human resources, and IT staff. Everyone on the team makes sure the company is ready for a cyber attack.

An incident response team (IRT) is a group of people who handle a security incident. A good team needs different skills. You should have a manager to lead the team, experts to handle digital forensics and threat detection, and people from legal, PR, and HR.

A good incident response plan needs several key parts. This includes explaining what the plan is for, how to manage risks, a clear way to handle problems, and a communication plan. The plan should also name the incident response team and explain how to update the plan over time.

Two of the most well-known security framework guides for incident response are from NIST and SANS. They both provide step-by-step help for companies, including small businesses, to create a plan to deal with cyber threats.

A Computer Security Incident Response Team, or CSIRT, is a team that deals with all parts of a security incident. They are the first line of defense and handle the mitigation and recovery efforts after a cyber attack.

The six steps of an incident response plan are:
1) Preparation, which is making the plan and getting the team ready.
2) Threat detection and analysis to find the security incident.
3) Containment to stop the incident from spreading.
4) Getting rid of the threat.
5) Recovery to get systems back to normal.
6) Post-incident review to learn from the event.

All steps are important, but the most important one is preparation. This is when you create and test your incident response plan, set up security controls, and form your incident response team. Being ready before a data breach can greatly reduce the damage.

A “postmortem” meeting, also called a post-incident review, is a formal meeting held after a security incident is over. The point is to look at what happened, what went well, and what could be better in your incident response plan for next time.

A “blameless” retrospective is a type of post-incident review where no one is blamed for what went wrong. The goal is to focus on fixing the system and processes, not on finding who is at fault. This helps everyone talk freely about the security incident, which makes the whole team stronger.

A risk classification matrix helps a team figure out how bad a security incident is by looking at its impact and how likely it is to happen. This helps the incident response team decide which cyber threats to deal with first. This is a key part of good risk management.

Many tools help with incident management. You can use security controls like firewalls and antivirus for prevention. For threat detection, you can use systems that watch for problems. For incident handling, you might use automatic tools that do simple tasks for you.

Putting an incident response plan in place can be hard, especially for small businesses that might not have a lot of money or staff. Other common problems include getting leaders to see the plan’s value and finding people with the right skills for the incident response team. It’s also tough to keep the plan up-to-date with new cyber threats.

Automation plays a big part in modern incident response. It helps security teams handle a lot of alerts by doing simple tasks for them, like finding and stopping a threat. This lets people focus on harder problems.

To see if your incident management process is working, you can track key numbers. For example, you can track how long it takes to start handling a problem and how long it takes to get things back to normal after a cyber attack.

If you think a vulnerability has been used to get into your systems, the first thing to do is follow your incident response plan. You should cut off the affected systems to stop the problem from spreading and tell your incident response team. They will then do digital forensics to confirm the breach and start fixing things.

Even if you aren’t sure what happened, you should still treat it as a possible security incident. Use your incident response plan and get your incident response team involved. They will use their tools and knowledge to look into it and find out what caused the problem.

You should contact Cisco’s PSIRT when you think a cybersecurity incident involves one of their products. They are experts in incident handling for Cisco gear and can give you expert help to stop the problem and get things working again.

When you are getting over a cyber attack that involved Cisco devices, your incident response team can use a lot of resources. Cisco’s PSIRT can help with incident management. They can guide you through the recovery and help you find out why the security incident happened.

To be ready for incident response, your company should have a strong incident response plan. This means doing practice runs and training your incident response team on incident handling. Having a good security policy and security controls in place is also key to good risk management.