The steps for responding to a security incident can vary depending on the specific incident and the organisation’s policies and procedures and the involvement of specialist third-parties, such as outsourcing incident response to a Security Operations Centre. However, the general steps are outlined below:
Containment: The first step is to contain the incident to prevent further damage or compromise. This may involve disconnecting affected systems from the network, shutting down services, or disabling compromised accounts.
Identification: Identify the scope and nature of the incident, including what systems and data have been affected, and how the incident occurred.
Eradication: Remove the cause of the incident, such as malware, vulnerabilities, or malicious actors. This may involve cleaning up infected systems, patching vulnerabilities, or blocking malicious IP addresses.
Recovery: Restore normal operations and services. This may involve rebuilding systems, restoring backups, or reconfiguring/redploying services.
Communication: Communicate with relevant parties about the incident, including management, employees, customers, and regulatory agencies, as appropriate.
Lessons learned: Learn from the incident, including identifying what could have been done differently to prevent or mitigate it.
Closure: Follow-up with any necessary actions, such as filing incident reports, notifying law enforcement, or conducting a post-incident review and updating the incident response plan if necessary.
It’s important to have a well-defined and regularly tested incident response plan in place before an incident to ensure you can respond quickly and effectively.
Organisations should regularly practice:
Incident Response Plans: Ensuring that incident teams understand their roles and the technology and services available to them.
Business Continuity Plans: Ensuring continuity arrangements are tested and teams understand how these plans will be implemented.
Crisis Management Plans: Ensuring teams understand when to invoke crisis management, the form it takes, and their roles within it.
Third-Party Support: Ensuring teams understand the services available to them, how to engage them, and what to expect. Noone wants to be search for the cyber insurance telephone number during a crisis.
ICA Consultancy has helped companies of various sizes and across various industries define, implement and test security incident response plans, including playbooks and crisis management activities.
Talk to us today. We can help!
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