Cyber incident response plan
An effective cyber incident response plan can be the difference between an organization that experiences a minor disruption following a data breach and one that collapses into financial ruin. All sectors face attacks of increasing size and sophistication each year, and many have failed to control the damage in time, facing insurmountable costs addressing compromised data, customer loss, and regulatory penalties. However, with a cyber incident response plan, an organization can have a blueprint for a swift and effective response when facing a security incident.
What is a cyber incident response plan?
A cyber incident response plan is a document that outlines what an organization should do in the event of a data breach or other form of security incident. Given the surging threat of cybercrime, these plans are crucial to an organization's information security and business continuity measures. According to tech giant Cisco, they estimated that the amount of money organizations spend recovering from cyber attacks will increase by 75% in the five years from 2021 to 2025, reaching as much as $10.5 trillion.
Implementing a cyber incident response plan
To implement a cyber incident response plan, organizations must understand that information security risks are an inevitable part of modern business and must take pre-emptive measures to contain the threat. NIST's Computer Security Incident Handling Guide is the most common cyber incident response framework, containing six phases that guide organizations through the process:
1. Preparation
2. Identification
3. Containment
4. Eradication
5. Recovery
6. Lessons learned
Although each stage contains complex and interrelated actions, the documented plan should provide simple and precise guidance, free from jargon. This enables stakeholders to make decisions quickly and identify a plan of action without sifting through lengthy technical details.
The first phase is the preparation phase, where an effective incident response plan provides guidelines for an organization's steps before a disruptive incident occurs. The plan begins by outlining how an organization should mitigate the risk of a data breach. The preparation phase should align organizational policies on data protection with security goals and technological defenses. At a minimum, employees should receive information security staff awareness training, including specific training on incident response. Systems should also be audited to ensure that sensitive data is adequately protected.
The second phase of incident response planning is to identify when an organization's systems have been compromised. If an intrusion can be spotted quickly, the attack can be thwarted, or at least the response effort can be expedited, minimizing the damage and saving time and money. When identifying a security incident, questions to be answered include: who discovered the breach, what is the extent of the breach, is it affecting operations, and what is the source of the compromise?
The third phase covers the steps to mitigate the damage once the breach occurs. This could mean taking action to remove the criminal hacker from the systems or to isolate the already compromised data. During this phase, it is essential to consider whether systems need to be taken offline or deleted and whether immediate steps can be taken to close vulnerabilities.
Phase four of a cyber incident response plan is about rectifying the weakness that enabled the data breach to occur. The specifics will depend on the type of incident. Still, during this stage, it is crucial to identify how the information was compromised and how to eradicate the risk. For example, suppose the organization is infected by malware. In that case, the malicious software should be removed, and the affected parts of the organization should be isolated. Meanwhile, if the attack occurred because a criminal hacker compromised an employee's login credentials, the employee's account should be frozen.
Once the threat has been eradicated, the organization can move on to the stage of cyber incident response: getting the systems back online. This will be more complex in some instances than others. Still, it is an essential part of the process and should be treated carefully. Without a proper recovery process, the organization could remain vulnerable to similar attacks, compounding the damage. As part of the recovery process, the affected systems should be tested and monitored once the situation has been remedied. This ensures that the measures put in place work as intended, allowing for any necessary corrections.
The last phase of the cyber incident response plan is to review the incident and identify improvement opportunities. The incident response team should meet to evaluate the parts of the plan that worked and the problems encountered. Every step of the process should be assessed, discussing what happened and why, what was done to contain the situation, and what could have been done differently. For example, were there any gaps in the plan, and was the documentation clear and concise?