According to a study, more than 77% or organisations do not have an Incident Response Plan.
An Incident Response plan is a set of documented instructions to help IT staff detect, respond to, and recover from network security incidents.
Some incidents lead to massive network or data breaches that can impact organisations for days or even months. This is why a proper Incident response planning contains specific directions for specific attack scenarios, to avoid further damages, reduce recovery time and mitigate cybersecurity risk. The plan will help your IT team to stop, contain, and control the incident quickly.
After setting up the plan, there should be regular updates and training of staffs to mitigate new risks.
Here below is a guideline to set up an Incident Response Plan.
1. Assess your information network
To protect your network and data against major damage, you need assess the level of risks and determine the critical components. Test their level of security and determine what will be the consequences on your organization in case of failure.
2. Back up plans
Once you have identified the sensitive modules, create backups and save their location. These actions will help you recover your network quickly. Do the same with your designated staffs. If they cannot respond to an incident, you will have a second person who can take over. Having backups at each level will help in limiting damage and disruption of your organization.
3. Assign roles and responsibilities for the incident response team members.
Every staffs and members of the Incident Response team should know their role and responsibilities. This will help your organization react quickly in case of an incident.
4. Continuity plan
Some places may be unreachable during a security breach or a natural disaster. In any case, employee safety is vital. Allowing them and their back up to work remotely will help to secure their safety and reduce business downtime. To support worker communication, provide infrastructure such as virtual private networks (VPNs) and secure web gateways.
5. Train your staff on incident response
Only IT persons may require a full understanding of the incident response strategy. However, it's crucial that everyone in your company knows the significance of the plan. After you've built it, teach your employees how to respond to an occurrence. Employee participation with IT helps shorten the duration of outages. Furthermore, understanding basic security concepts might help to reduce the likelihood of a major security incident.
6. Lessons Learned
After simulating an incident, meet with all members of the Incident Response Team to share what you've learned. This will help you improve your plan and determine what worked well and where there were flaws. Lessons gathered from both simulated and real-world incidents will aid in the strengthening of your systems in the face of future attacks.
If your organisation do not have an incident response plan, Ascentrix Consulting can help you. Do not hesitate to contact us.
If you want to know more about cyberattacks, please read our article on phishing.
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