WHAT ARE THE SIX PHASES OF AN INCIDENT RESPONSE PLAN IN CYBERSECURITY
WHAT ARE THE SIX PHASES OF AN INCIDENT RESPONSE PLAN IN CYBERSECURITY
What is a cyber security incident response plan?
The incident response plan’s six steps will show you how to handle a data breach. An incident response plan is a written, recorded strategy that includes six distinct phases to aid IT, professionals, and staff in spotting and responding to a cybersecurity issue, such as a data breach or cyberattack. To successfully establish and maintain an incident response strategy, regular updates and training are essential.
A Cyber Incident Response Plan is a straightforward document that informs IT and cybersecurity specialists on what to do in the case of a security incident, such as a data breach or a data leak. Any business that is serious about cybersecurity must have a robust cyber incident response strategy. This strategy should be amended regularly based on research, experience, and training.
But how do you go about creating one, and what are the six phases of an incident response plan to which experts appear to be referring? In this blog, we will try to address these essential problems to help you establish an effective response strategy to cyber-attacks and security concerns.
A cyber incident response policy should be prepared if your firm is attacked by hackers in the future.
What is the most effective method for developing an incident response plan?
To address a suspected data breach, a staged incident response strategy should be devised. Within each phase, specific areas of need should be assessed.
The incident response phases are:
Preparation
Identify
Contain
Eradication
Recovery
Lessons Learned
1. Prepare:
This part of the cyber incident response plan is all about preparing for a cyber security occurrence. During this phase, you must connect the organizational rules on personal information and sensitive data protection, as well as network security goals, with the organization’s technological infrastructure.
During this phase, you must guarantee that all workers have a minimum level of cybersecurity knowledge and training in dealing with a cyber crisis. Everyone must also be informed of their duties and responsibilities in the event of an emergency. This step also includes identifying important assets and crown jewels, as well as assessing your organization’s existing skills for coping with a cyber-attack. You can hire an external auditor to provide a full review of your organization’s breach readiness maturity or simply a one-day check of your overall compliance and incident response skills.
2. Identify:
As the name implies, this step is all about determining if you’ve been penetrated or whether any of your systems have been hacked. If a breach is identified, according to this step of the NIST Cybersecurity Framework, you should focus on answering questions like:
– Who identified the security flaw?
– What is the scope of the violation?
– Does it have an impact on operations?
– What may be the root of the compromise, and so forth.
During this period, it is also critical to document everything.
3. Contain:
Everything you can do to reduce harm after you’ve already been hit is included in this phase.
In this step of the incident response plan, you must assess what may be done to mitigate the consequences of the breach. Which systems may be turned off? Can and should anything be securely deleted? What is the short-term plan? What is the long-term plan for dealing with the aftermath of the attack? All of these concerns must be addressed in the third phase of the cyber event response strategy.
This phase should also include crucial tasks like assessing backups, privileged access credentials and ensuring that all applicable security upgrades have been installed.
4. Eradicate:
The fourth phase of the cyber incident response plan focuses on determining what triggered the breach in the first place and dealing with it in real time. During this phase, the incident response procedure will include fixing system vulnerabilities, deleting malicious malware, upgrading old software versions, and so on.
This stage entails doing everything is necessary to guarantee that any harmful stuff is removed from your systems. Make certain, however, that you do not lose any important data in the process.
Anyone may be assaulted today. However, if you continue to allow malicious software or security issues to fester in your system, the harm to your public reputation can be severe. Your legal culpability may also increase.
5. Recover:
As the name implies, this phase is involved with restoring impacted systems to operational status following an attack or event. Of course, whether the weaknesses in the systems have been patched up and how your company will guarantee that these systems are not compromised again will play a role.
Because it tests, monitors, and verifies the impacted systems, this element of the cyber incident response strategy is crucial. Without adequate recuperation, avoiding another comparable catastrophe in the future would be extremely impossible. As we all know, this may be terrible for corporate operations as well as the organization’s public image.
6. Lessons Learned:
We’ll go out on a limb and say that this is one of the most critical parts of the incident response strategy. Yes, Anyone and everyone can and will be breached. The difference, though, is how we deal with the breach and what we learn from it.
During this phase, it is critical to convene all members of the Incident Response team and explain what occurred. It’s almost like a look back at the attack. This step must be completed within two weeks of the occurrence. You will return to the documentation developed in step 2 during this phase. You can assess what occurred, why it occurred, and what was done to contain the situation.
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