An incident response plan is a company’s standard operating procedure in handling a data breach or cyber attack. It attempts to either prevent or mitigate losses from the event to avoid data losses that can harm the organisation’s processes. All business owners need to develop a proper incident response plan. Otherwise, they can face a wide range of concerns that can halt or even drop a business’s progress to a dangerous low.
Accompanying your digital transformation with an incident response plan
Bringing your company’s operations to online platforms is a requirement of undergoing digital transformation. Most of your technologically progressive competitors are already utilising online engagements to match consumer demand. However, that doesn’t mean you should undergo this transition without preparing for it carefully. Your security’s reach should match your business’s reach in online spaces through an incident response plan.
In this article, we’ll share four key steps in developing an incident response plan.
Step#1: Preparing for a cyber attack
Proper preparations need to be in place before you can prevent, analyse and resolve a security breach. This includes creating an incident policy, a response plan with communication channels, proper documentation and proper crisis management tools to record the threat’s details. It’s best to work with cybersecurity professionals if you don’t have a solid IT team yet at your company’s disposal.
Step#2: Identify the present threat
Identifying the threat enables your team to execute a rapid response to mitigate major losses. Your IT personnel will simultaneously collect events from log files and monitoring tools to diagnose and respond to error messages or intrusion detection notifications. Knowing what you’re working against will give you a better idea of how to contain the threat and preserve your digital infrastructure’s safety.
Step#3: Contain or eradicate the threat
Containing the threat prevents any further damage to your systems, especially if you still don’t have the means to eradicate it. Containment is necessary to have enough documentation of evidence you can use to reinforce your security systems or track down the root of these cyberattacks.
If the threat is too difficult to contain, eradication is your next course of action. This involves removing the threat entirely and restoring your affected systems. Remember that you may lose some data if a cyber attack already corrupted them. This is why it’s necessary to perform a backup regularly or during the containment stage to prevent massive data losses.
Step#4: Recovery and assessment
Once the threat has been dealt with, it’s necessary to audit and debug your systems for the total damage your system went through. It’s your judgment call if it’s safe to resume operations. However, you should test and monitor your system’s other components, even those untouched by the breach. This allows you to see if there is abnormal behaviour or compromised systems that need checking and assessment.
An organisation needs to be capable of handling any incident, whether it’s an on-site logistical issue or an IT infrastructure concern. After experiencing a cyber attack, it’s necessary to analyse your current incident response plan for revisions and upgrades. Doing so lets you improve your future incident response efforts. Unfortunately, preparing for cyber threats is a different matter to interpreting weaknesses in digital infrastructure. For this reason, business owners must consult cybersecurity experts for thorough diagnoses and recommendations on their current cybersecurity measures.
FraudWatch International is an Australian based, global brand protection company that offers your company the protection it needs in today’s digital age. We provide brand protection that can prevent your business from suffering massive losses from cyber attacks. Learn about how our services can secure your business by contacting our team today!