How To Be Prepared With An Advanced Incident Response Plan From Cyber Attacks ?

Incident Response

Incident Response is a term used to describe the process by which an organization handles a data breach or cyberattack, including the way the organization attempts to manage the consequences of the attack or breach (the “incident”). Ultimately, the goal is to effectively manage the incident so that the damage is limited and both recovery time and costs, as well as collateral damage such as brand reputation, are kept at a minimum.Organizations should, at minimum, have a clear incident response plan in place. This plan should define what constitutes an incident for the company and provide a clear, guided process to be followed when an incident occurs. Additionally, it’s advisable to specify the teams, employees, or leaders responsible for both managing the overall incident response initiative and those tasked with taking each action specified in the incident response plan

Why Do I Need An Incident Response Plan?

Having an IR plan in place is a critical part of a successful security program. Its purpose is to establish and test clear measures that an organization could and likely should take to reduce the impact of a breach from external and internal threats. While not every attack can be prevented, an organization's IR stance should emphasize anticipation, agility, and adaptation, head of security analytics at Vectra. "With a successful incident response program, damage can be mitigated or avoided altogether, "Enterprise architecture and systems engineering must be based on the assumption that systems or components have either been compromised or contain undiscovered vulnerabilities that could lead to undetected compromises. Additionally, missions and business functions must continue to operate in the presence of compromise." The capabilities of an IR program are often measured on the level of an organization's maturity, which defines how proactive an organization is. Companies that are able to map policies to the level of risk appropriate to the business are better prepared in the event of a security incident.
By way of example, explains that the goal for a small business should be to reach a level of repeatable process, which includes having a maintained plan, concrete roles and responsibilities, lines of communication, and established response procedures. These are the necessary stepping stones that would allow it to appropriately address the bulk of incidents it would likely see. "However, for organizations with highly valuable information with a high-risk level, a formal plan is not enough, and they need to be much more intelligence-driven and proactive in threat-hunting capabilities.

Measuring IR Success

Testing IR daily creates a necessary and inquisitive mindset that habitually asks "if this had been X" in order to determine whether an incident is escalated and/or who to contact. Companies need to gain as much information as possible so as to act on the presence of attackers. Being proactive allows organizations to better react with a deeper understanding of the threat actor's intentions and how the organization's defenses relate to potential threats. That's why threat awareness is one of the core metrics used to assess an organization's maturity and capabilities for IR success .
Every detail and every event that happens can help defenders decide what to do in response to an incident so they are better positioned to quickly and sufficiently isolate, adapt, and return to normal business operations should they ever encounter a worst-case scenario. A lot of organizations begin with an incident response framework, such as NIST's "Computer Security Incident Handling Guide," and use that as a guide for developing a unique IR plan specific to the company. But understanding who all of the players are is one of the most critical starting points when developing or updating an IR plan. Indeed, people can get tunnel vision within their operations centers and forget they may need to involve the business section, sales, and IT, so those people are not written into the plan, Dixon says. What's most important for organizations to keep in mind is that the IR plan needs to be applicable to their business. "A framework is a framework. It's a recommendation for best practices. It's not meant to suggest that every situation is applicable to all organizations across the world," Dixon says. "People need to be comfortable with adjusting the frameworks to apply to their organization."

How Security Incident Management Works

The Cybersecurity Incident Management Process

As cybersecurity threats continue to grow in volume and sophistication, organizations are adopting practices that allow them to rapidly identify, respond to, and mitigate these types of incidents while becoming more resilient and protecting against future incidents. Security incident management utilizes a combination of appliances, software systems, and human-driven investigation and analysis. The security incident management process typically starts with an alert that an incident has occurred and engagement of the incident response team. From there, incident responders will investigate and analyze the incident to determine its scope, assess damages, and develop a plan for mitigation.

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