INCIDENT RESPONSE PLANNING
What is Incident Management?
Information security incident management is the process of identifying, responding to, and resolving security incidents that occur in an organization’s information systems. This process typically involves the following steps:
- Identification: Security incidents are detected and identified through various means, such as security logs, intrusion detection systems, and user reports.
- Containment: Once an incident is identified, the first priority is to contain the incident and prevent it from spreading further.
- Eradication: The next step is to remove the cause of the incident, which may involve cleaning up malware, patching vulnerabilities, or disconnecting an infected device from the network.
- Recovery: After the incident has been contained and eradicated, the focus shifts to restoring normal operations, which may involve recovering data, rebuilding systems, and testing the restored systems to ensure that they are functioning properly.
- Lessons learned: After the incident has been resolved, it is important to review the incident and determine what could be done differently in the future to prevent similar incidents from occurring.
An incident management process should also have clear roles and responsibilities, communication plan, procedures, and escalation paths.
Why is Incident Response Planning important?
Information security incident response planning is important for several reasons:
- Minimizing the impact of incidents: By having a plan in place, organizations can respond quickly and effectively to security incidents, which can help minimize the damage caused by the incident.
- Compliance: Many regulations and industry standards, such as HIPAA and PCI-DSS, require organizations to have incident response plans in place. Failure to comply with these regulations can result in significant fines and legal penalties.
- Cost savings: A well-designed incident response plan can help an organization recover from an incident more quickly and at a lower cost. This is because the incident response team will already have a clear understanding of what needs to be done, and they will have the necessary tools and procedures in place to respond quickly and effectively.
- Reputation and customer trust: A well-handled incident response can help minimize the negative impact of an incident on an organization’s reputation, and can help to maintain the trust of customers and clients.
- Continuous Improvement: Incident response process should be a live process, not a once and done type. Therefore, an incident management process should be reviewed and updated on a regular basis in order to reflect the changes in the organization’s systems and business environment. This can help the organization to anticipate potential incidents and prepare for them in advance.
What questions should I be asking about my organizations' incident management?
When reviewing your organization’s information security incident plan, you should consider the following questions:
- Are the incident response procedures clearly defined and easy to understand?
- Are there clear roles and responsibilities for incident response team members, and are these roles and responsibilities tested regularly?
- Are the incident response procedures tested regularly, and are the results of these tests used to improve the incident response plan?
- Is there a process in place for communicating with stakeholders, such as employees, customers, and regulators, in the event of a security incident?
- Are there procedures in place for backing up and preserving data in the event of an incident, and are these procedures tested regularly?
- Are there procedures in place for reporting incidents to the appropriate authorities, and are these procedures tested regularly?
- Are there procedures in place for notifying and training employees about incident response procedures and how to report incidents?
- Does the incident management process aligns with international standard ISO/IEC 27035?
- Are there procedures in place for reviewing and updating the incident response plan on a regular basis, and is this process integrated with the organization’s risk management process?
- Are the incident response procedures tested and exercised, and are the results of these exercises used to improve the incident response plan?
Answering these questions can help you to understand the strengths and weaknesses of your organization’s incident response plan and identify areas that need improvement.
Incident Response Planning Offering
Here is a sample of some of the services we offer around security program development.
- Cyber Incident Readiness Assessments
- Playbook Development
- Incident Response Training
- Tabletop Exercises – Executive and Operational
- Ransomware Readiness Assessment
- Detective and Preventive Technical Safeguard Review
- Incident Response Plan and Program Development
- Incident Management Process and Procedure Development
- Cyber Insurance Review