How to Create a Strong Incident Response Plan: A Guide for Business Leaders

How prepared is your business for a cybersecurity breach?

A breach alone is not a disaster, but mishandling it is.

— Serene Davis

Handling a breach comes down to one thing: having a good incident response plan. But why is that even important?

There are two key reasons, both from a business and a legal perspective:

• First, it shows customers you care about them, reducing the likelihood of them leaving after you announce a breach.
• Second, it’s now a mandatory SEC requirement for public companies to report a breach within four days?after determining the incident is material,? including details about the incident's nature, scope, and timing, as well as its impact on the company’s financial condition.

Preparing for incidents aligns you with the first reason, showing customers you are proactive and responsible and reduces the risk of failing to meet the second.

But why prepare for a risk? Why not just focus on protection?

Cybersecurity is best seen as a layered approach to protection, with multiple defensive measures complementing each other. However, as security measures advance, so do hacking techniques and at a faster rate.?

It's naive to claim that any code is secure.

Think of any industry brand name and they've been hacked. They are still running strong, though, partly because they all have a cyber incident response plan.

Adding an incident response plan as another security layer helps prevent you from feeling the full effects of a breach. And proactively assessing and preparing for potential incidents not only protects you during a breach but can also prevent it by identifying vulnerabilities early on.

How To Create a Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan

1. Establish the Incident Response Policy

The incident response policy is essential for preparing for cybersecurity incidents. It emphasizes the need for readiness and clearly defines which parts of the organization it covers, including systems, networks, data, and operational processes.

• Clear definitions of key terms are provided to ensure uniform understanding across the organization. Important terms include: Incident, Event, Alert, Breach, Threat, Vulnerability
• Specific roles and responsibilities are assigned to team members to streamline the incident response process

2. Assemble the Incident Response Team

Your team should be multidisciplinary, with members from various departments in IT, security, legal, human resources, communications, and executive management. Maintaining and implementing cybersecurity involves the whole organization.

Keep an updated contact list that includes phone numbers, email addresses, and alternative contact methods for all team members. This list should be accessible in any situation, especially when primary communication methods are not possible.

3.?Identify Critical Assets and Risks

This ensures that all your software, products, tools, and devices that are being used in the organization are being accounted for to reduce the chance of unknown assets breaching security. Plus, it helps that in the case of a breach, having this in your incident response plan speeds up the process of assessing your assets.

• Asset Inventory: Create and maintain a detailed inventory of all critical assets, including hardware, software, data, and network components. Classify assets based on their importance to the organization’s operations.
• ?Risk Assessment: Perform a thorough risk assessment to identify potential threats (e.g., malware, insider threats, natural disasters) and vulnerabilities (e.g., outdated software, weak passwords). Prioritize risks based on their likelihood and potential impact.

Download A Guide + Checklist to Conduct a Thorough Asset Inventory Effectively?to help you perform your asset inventory for your incident response plan well.

?4. Develop Incident Detection and Reporting Procedures

Developing procedures ensures potential security issues are reported immediately; a key importance of creating your company’s incident response plan. It involves setting up a structured approach for detecting and reporting incidents.

Set Up Monitoring and Detection:

• Use detection tools to analyze log data, antivirus software to catch malware, and network monitors to spot unusual activity.?
• Establish baseline normal activity by understanding what normal system and network activity looks like to easily spot any unusual changes in your security.?
• Stay updated on current threats by subscribing to threat intelligence feeds and integrating them into your detection methods.

Implement Reporting Mechanisms:

Establish clear procedures for reporting incidents, including immediate reporting to the incident response team, using a standardized incident report form or template, and providing channels for reporting such as a dedicated email address, phone number, or online portal.

5. Create Incident Response Procedures

This is a crucial point in planning. Breaches can occur and while they all pose a risk to data, not all of them actually affect data. Understanding how to report it to trigger the best response in key in a security incident response plan.

Incident Categorization

Develop a system to classify incidents by their severity and impact. The most common categories include:

• Low: Minor malware detected and removed.
• Medium: Unauthorized access to non-critical systems.
• High: Data breach involving sensitive customer information.
• Critical: Ransomware attack on critical infrastructure.

Response Steps

Outline detailed procedures for each phase of the incident response lifecycle:

• Team Preparation
• Incident Identification
• Incident Containment
• Breach Eradication
• System Recovery
• Lessons Learned (post-incident review)

6. Establish Communication Plans

Establish internal communication plans to communicate breaches to stakeholders and affected departments.

External Communication

Develop guidelines for communicating with external parties. This includes:

• Customers: Providing timely and accurate information about the incident and any impact on services.
• Partners and Vendors: Notifying them if their services or data are affected.
• SEC Government: The rule of 4 days maximum after determining the incident is material. Prepare how you plan to share information with them if need be.

7. Implement Training and Awareness Programs

As with good cybersecurity, you should be as prepared as you can be at all times! And this, again, involves the whole organization.

Consistently have:

• Employee Training sessions to ensure all employees are aware of security policies and incident reporting procedures and
• Simulations and Drills?to test the effectiveness of the plan and the readiness of the incident response team. These exercises should simulate real-world scenarios and cover various types of incidents.

8. Maintain and Update the Plan

As said before cybersecurity is dynamic and so your plan should be too.

As more assets, systems and processes are implemented in your organization, your security profile changes and this affects how your security incident plan should be.

Perform regular reviews, say quarterly or biannually. And always do a post-incident review and update the plans with new insight from the breach(es).

If you need help creating your incident response plan or you need to fix vulnerabilities found during the process, send an email to us or book a call.?

Remember, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” — Benjamin Franklin