Role of Incident Response in Cybersecurity
Cyber attacks are serious; as hacking and data extraction methods are becoming more advanced, the need to secure sensitive information is more crucial than ever. All companies that have an online presence should invest time and effort into creating a systematic incident response plan to respond to cyberattacks.
In this Article
- What is a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan?
- Why is an Incident Response Plan Important?
- What is Included in a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan?
- Steps to a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan
- Preparation
- Detection & Analysis
- Containment, Eradication, & Recovery
- Post-Incident Activity
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Cyberattacks happen to online businesses, big and small, across all industries. Even huge organizations with very strong cybersecurity measures in place still run the risk of being compromised with data breaches.
In just the first half of 2021 alone, there were 1,767 reported data breaches globally that exposed a whopping 18.8 billion pieces of information.
Whether you have a small business, or you run a large company that has been operating for a while, you need to have appropriate measures to respond to malicious attacks. There is no way to be sure that you will definitely prevent a cyberattack. But you can mitigate the risk by using intelligent security systems and software.
Read on to learn why an incident response plan is crucial for your business security, and what steps are involved in a cyber security incident response plan.
What is a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan?
A cybersecurity incident response plan is an official document that security and IT personnel refer to when a serious security event occurs within a business. These events include data leaks, stolen information, ransomware attacks, or other extraction of sensitive information (whether that of staff, clients, or operational information).
The actions that are outlined in the plan are to minimize the damage of the incident on the business and effectively “clean up” the aftermath to ensure safety is restored (and ideally, any breached data has been secured again).
A strategic plan will have set procedures that outline the steps to be taken according to the specific incident. It includes guidelines for communication, responsibilities, roles, and protocols of action.
Why is an Incident Response Plan Important?
Apart from the obvious reason being that you need to know how to respond to damaging incidents, having a set plan in place when a cybersecurity incident occurs will save you time, energy, and money.
An incident response plan is essential for serious businesses as it will assist your company in:
- Correctly identifying the source of the issue (with protocols to assess the damage and get to the root cause quickly).
- Containing the incident if it is ongoing and protecting information (this might even mean that you thwart criminals attempting to extract data from getting any deeper in their search).
- Identifying and managing the weak points in security that failed and fixing them (why the attack happened).
- Recovering from the attack with less serious implications/minimal damage.
- Assessing, documenting, and communicating lessons learned to improve systems and update the response plan for the future.
As we’ve already stated, cyber threats are real and continue to grow in frequency and severity. Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic further exacerbated cyber attacks with more companies becoming fully remote and taking more of their systems and information sharing online.
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What is Included in a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan?
Depending on your industry and organization, your cybersecurity plan may look different to other companies. However, broadly speaking, there are some key features of a cybersecurity plan that all businesses should include. These are:
- Description of the team handling incident response (employees, their roles and responsibilities, and contact details).
- Overview of the processes to respond.
- Steps to contain the incident and prevent it from growing.
- How external parties and the company may be contacted and what information about the incident will be shared.
- How to restore systems, information, processes, and data affected.
In the section below, we’ll go into more detail on the steps to create a cybersecurity incident response plan.
Steps to a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) (link) states that there are four key phases to a successful incident response plan. These include:
- Preparation
- Detection & Analysis
- Containment, Eradication, & Recovery
- Post-Incident Activity
We’ll expand on each phase below.
Preparation
The planning that happens before the incident occurs will be the saving grace for when you’re faced with a serious issue. You’ll be able to recover faster and more efficiently when you are prepared.
The preparation phase includes outlining who is in the incident response team (contact info and their role). This phase is also detailing the prevention actions that will be taken place for specific threats. Your company must be doing more than just implementing the cheapest VPN (although that is one helpful security measure).
This part of the plan should detail how sensitive information is managed, stored, and shared. Additionally, risk assessments, software for malware attack prevention, and the like should be detailed here.
Detection & Analysis
When an incident occurs, this is where the detection and analysis phase of your incident response plan is first triggered. You need to determine the origin of the attack, and unfortunately trying to create a plan that encompasses every possible risk and a set procedure for each threat won’t be possible.
Consider the most common cyber attacks for the industry you’re in and the type of company you have, as well as the unique vulnerabilities your company has.
Detecting security incidents can be done by:
- Noticing signs of the incident before it even happens (precursor)
- Noticing the incident occurring during or after the attack (indicators)
For example, noticing failed log-in attempts can be precursor detection for a hacker attempting to get into the system. You might have software in your planning as a preventative method to detect when this occurs.
If an incident is taking place, you will analyze and validate the event (the NIST has more information on how you might do that) to ensure that the response that is triggered is the right one for the event. Your plan would include how to document different types of incidents as well as who to notify (police, customers, recovery teams) and at which phase of the process they would be notified.
Containment, Eradication & Recovery
The most important and actionable part of your plan is this phase, as it includes what you are doing in response to the incident. This would be containing it, eradicating any threats, and recovering from the attack.
The NIST’s criteria that must be considered when creating a containment strategy includes:
- What resources are at risk of damage/theft
- How will evidence be preserved
- Availability of services (networks connection for external parties handling damage control)
- Resources required to handle the containment and recovery (monetary, time, personnel)
- Duration of the strategy being enacted (how long is each phase of the solution? Hours, days, weeks, months)
It is very important to gather all evidence that can be found and have it preserved for eradication and recovery purposes. It might mean that these documents only stay internal, or you give them to any organizations or authorities involved in the incident response.
When it comes to the eradication phase, this will be different depending on the incident type. It’s simple; eliminate whatever will help to stop the attack (this could be disabling breached accounts, closing networks, or deleting malware). Oftentimes, consulting with a specialized data forensics specialist can be helpful in this phase.
In the recovery phase, you’ll go back to the security incident response plan and make any updates needed based on the new information you have after the attack. Recovery can also include training employees on the procedures in the plan to be more equipped to deal with future incidents.
Depending on the severity of the attack, the eradication and recovery phases could be anywhere from a few days, to several months.
Post-Incident Activity
After recovering from the incident, your company should debrief as part of the post-incident activity. Reflecting on what happened can help the team identify similar incidents sooner.
Assess the severity of the damage and whether new tools and security measures should be made. Continue to update the cyber security incident response plan for ultimate effectiveness. This is also where relevant parties need to be notified.
If sensitive data was extracted, copied, viewed, or used, then most state laws require the public to be notified. Affected parties (like customers) would be notified, and oftentimes the media will be involved as they learn of the attack and report it to the general public (if you are a notable company).
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Bottom Line
To ensure the highest level of safety possible in the face of inevitable threats to your business, having a cyber incident response plan is crucial. Following the steps outlined in your company’s plan will protect sensitive data, minimize the damage created through attacks, and restore operations to bounce back fast. Also, it may be valuable to work with specialists, security software, and even apps (like TaskCall) that can assist with incident management and response.
One last tip is to ensure that the plan is direct, brief, and straightforward; only include the most relevant and important information that key personnel needs to support your business before, during, and after an incident.
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