Has your company ever experienced leakages of confidential online documents or misuse of confidential data?
These types of incidences happen due to a variety of reasons like poor technology integrations, weak passwords, phishing scams, and irresponsible sharing of passwords. Companies across all sectors continue to deal with emerging security risks, therefore, you must understand the importance of having an incident response plan (IRP).
An IRP is a strategy for dealing with breach events or circumstances before it leads to a more complicated situation such as higher damage costs and compromised information security assets.
Its main purpose is to manage unauthorized access and cyber-attacks, minimize the potential data and business losses and draw out the underlying cause of an issue.
Importance of Incident Response (IR)
Since attacks can’t all be prevented, the purpose of having an effective security plan is to assess how an organization can alleviate the negative consequences in case of data theft or spyware.
Moreover, an IR plan can anticipate cybersecurity risks and help you stay afloat by providing business continuity solutions. This is a crucial responsibility for the company to identify and respond to security incidents as it puts the customer’s trust, company’s revenue, and reputation at stake.
Data Protection
This applies to both personal and business information. Data protection is not a new concept but having an incident response plan would include backup within your security strategy, leverage log data, and provide early warnings of malicious insider activities.
Build Strong Corporate Reputation and Customer Trust
Handling security breaches properly is essential to building confidence among your customers. Having a well-prepared crisis plan means you have everything under control.
Prevent Serious Profit Loss
In case of security breaches, your company revenue will be affected due to fines and customer losses. But having an incident response plan can safeguard your revenues in a more structured approach, preventing your revenue to flow down the drain while managing the attack promptly.
Key Components of Incident Response Management
When planning for an IR program, a company must identify its level of maturity to further understand how it can proactively manage security incidents.
For instance, small companies must practice a redundant procedure that involves a well-sustained plan, clear responsibilities, and open communication. On the other hand, bigger corporations require a formal plan with a higher risk level using competent and proactive tools and techniques to determine threats.
To further explain, here are the key components of incident response management.
An all-inclusive program
To do this, identify your IR goals, recognize potential threats, and classify each type. A comprehensive plan also considers the company’s development and financial aspects. Planning is not made overnight, it takes time, effort, and expertise to win the right approach that will surely work for the company.
Reliable team
Have a team of experts who have the knack to perform your IR plans. These people should be fully aware of their responsibilities in the event of an attack.
The ideal Incident Response team consists of an IT engineer, IR manager, security analyst, threat researcher, external security forensic experts, corporate communications, legal representative, human resources, and C-level executives.
Security Incident Tools
Deploy toolsets that ensure reliability when analyzing, providing alerts, and helping to rectify security issues which include the following:
Flagrant abuse of privileges
Malicious insider threats
Malware infections
Phishing
Stolen Passwords
Unauthorized transmission of data
The Stages of Incident Response
1. Preparation
Being prepared and organized is the most critical part of incident response planning. Aside from helping to secure your business, this phase includes the following steps:
Let your employees know and understand their roles and explain why their contributions are important in case of a data breach. Make proper documentation for everyone’s roles and responsibilities.
Practice incident response drills to make sure everyone knows how to execute the tools and techniques and how the team can effectively collaborate using the IR resources.
Support from management is necessary. They can provide support in specific ways like securing sufficient funding or resources for training, execution, and other aspects to make an effective IR plan.
2. Identification
The second stage of Incident Response is to determine if you’ve been hit by a major breach and how you can fix it. Here are the main points you should consider in identifying illegal intrusions:
Areas or departments that are affected
Methods of detection
Operation and management issues
The person who witnessed or discover the breach
The severity of the situation
Source or point of entry
Time and date of the incident
3. Containment
This is a strategy where you utilize the supplementary back-up system to easily restore business operations without deleting everything once a breach is discovered. Permanently removing the data and information might even cause long-term complications.
When containing the breach, make sure you have the latest version of your operating system, inspect your protocol configuration for remote access, and strengthen administrative access and passwords.
4. Eradication
Analyze and remove the root cause of the breach and apply updates and patch systems again. Ensure that you have thoroughly removed any remaining security issues in your systems to avoid losing valuable data.
5. Recovery
The last step of your IR plan is the restoration of the affected systems and devices. You may also discuss with your team the most appropriate action and determine the weak points of the plan in case the same attack will happen in the future.
No one wants to be a victim of a data breach and hacked accounts, but everyone has the opportunity to build an essential plan to prevent these kinds of threats. Being prepared on what to do can help eliminate risk. Learn how to build your incident response plan and put it in place before any breach happens. Contact us today!
