How can you evaluate the effectiveness of an incident response plan?

Cybersecurity metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) are essential for assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of your security program, aligning your security efforts with your business goals, and communicating the value of security to your stakeholders. There are many possible metrics and KPIs you can track, depending on your specific security objectives and industry standards. However, some general principles to follow are: Choose metrics and KPIs that are relevant, meaningful, and actionable for your organization. Avoid measuring everything or using vague or subjective indicators. Use a combination of quantitative and qualitative measures to capture both the technical and the human aspects of security.

Metrics: They are quantifiable measures used to track, assess, and compare performance over time. Examples include conversion rate, customer satisfaction score, and monthly active users. Criteria: These are the principles or standards by which something is judged or assessed. Criteria establish the basis for making decisions or assessments and can vary widely depending on context. Examples include relevance (in content evaluation), quality (product assessment), efficiency (operations management), and affordability (procurement). Combining both, you establish quantifiable criteria to measure performance (e.g., a product must achieve a specific quality score).

Cybersecurity incident response plans (IRPs). An IRP is a documented list of instructions or procedures for your organization to detect, respond and recover from cybersecurity threats. It helps the organization organize themselves to effectively respond during a security incident. Without one in place, security teams may not be able to mitigate cyberthreats. Some of the common types of cyberattacks that you can simulate to test your IRP are ransomware, phishing and social engineering, and distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. These attacks can compromise the confidentiality, integrity or availability of your information systems or sensitive data. By conducting tabletop exercises, you can review your IRP, identify gaps.

1. Tabletop Exercises: Simulate a scenario and discuss actions. 2. Functional Testing: Validate functionalities under specified conditions. 3. Load Testing: Assess system performance under peak load. 4. Disaster Recovery Tests: Check ability to restore operations after an outage. 5. Penetration Testing: Identify vulnerabilities in security defenses via ethical hacking. 6. Usability Testing: Assess user-friendliness, intuitiveness, satisfaction. 7. Regression Tests: Confirm that recent changes haven't caused bugs in existing features. 8. Phishing Simulations: Gauge user awareness against malicious emails for cyberattack prevention. 9. Red Team Exercises: Mimic real-world attacks to test your cyber defense strategies.

Ceci permettra d’évaluer la fiabilité, et l'efficacité du IRP surtout en grandeur nature. Il ne s'agit plus ici des test virtuels mais physiques.

Regular testing through exercises, simulations and real events, especially potential incidents. Even if certain incidents might not require the IRP, let's say it was stopped before turning into a true incident. What if protections failed?

To identify the gaps, weaknesses, and strengths of your IRP, you should consider the following aspects: Compliance: Are you following the rules and regulations of your base jurisdiction and the other IRP jurisdictions you operate in? Are you reporting and paying the correct fees for each jurisdiction? Are you keeping accurate records of your mileage and fuel consumption? Efficiency: Are you optimizing your routes and schedules to reduce unnecessary mileage and fuel costs? Are you using the online services and tools provided by your base jurisdiction and IRP to simplify your registration and renewal processes? Are you taking advantage of the benefits and discounts offered by IRP and other organizations? Performance.

Know your Metrics--KPIs and Performance Data is a must when measuring your IRP effectiveness and operational activities. I prefer to choose and design actionable stats for continuous security improvement over time.

1. Incident Documentation: Thoroughly record occurrence details, response actions, and outcomes. 2. Root Cause Analysis: Identify the underlying cause of the incident. 3. Impact Analysis: Evaluate the extent and severity of damage caused by the incident. 4. Pattern Recognition: Monitor for repeated incidents or common pitfalls; leverage this to predict future occurrences. 5. Key Performance Indicators (KPIs): Utilize relevant metrics to measure incident handling efficiency/effectiveness e.g., MTTR - Mean Time To Repair. 6. IT Forensics: Use IT forensic techniques where necessary to trace origins/dynamics of sophisticated incidents. 7. Lessons Learned: Draw key takeaways from each incident to improve future responses.

Nothing tests a response plan better than a live scenario. Ideally, you will never need to run the plan, but if it is used, every action point, response, dependency, weakness, and time frame should be thoroughly reviewed and measured against the business expectations.

One thing I've found helpful is retro sessions with the CISRT team and a separate session with the Application or Business owner. There are a lot of moving parts and communications during a crisis and everyone has a different perspective or experience during an active response.

1. Surveys: Use online tools to gauge stakeholder satisfaction with incident handling. 2. Interviews: Directly converse with involved parties to gain in-depth insights. 3. Feedback Forms: Make these easily accessible post-incident for stakeholders to provide review. 4. Suggestion Boxes: An anonymous method for stakeholders to voice their ideas or concerns. 5. Review Meetings: Discuss incident responses as a team, encourage open dialogue about improvements. 6. Customer Service Metrics: Monitor metrics like Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT) post-incident. 7. Social Media Listening: Tune into public opinion by monitoring what's being said online about your response efforts. 8. Client/Partner Conversations: Regular check-ins.

1. Post-Incident Analysis: Review what went well and what didn't to identify areas for improvement. 2. Stay Informed: Keep up-to-date with latest practices and technologies in incident response. 3. Training: Regular trainings ensure team is prepared to implement changes effectively. 4. Define Clear Objectives: Reframe your plan's goals based on past experiences and future predictions. 5. Include Feedback: Update plan considering stakeholders' opinions, suggestions, or concerns. 6. Regular Auditing: Frequent audits can highlight weak points or outdated parts of your plan. 7. Flexibility: An effective IRP understands trends but also remains adaptable to unexpected challenges.

I think apart from what has been said, Red/Purple Team engagements do help analyze and understand the Incident response model. Analyzing and assessing such activities also help in the long run.

Learn from others, we have access to detailed information from incidents, breaches and other misfortunes other companies have been through.

Consider personalized training for the extended response team members as part of IR readiness improvement a couple of times a year. Solidifying these relationships allows for deeper collaboration and faster response.