What is an Incident Response Plan (IRP)?

Responding to an incident needs a team to work collaboratively, efficiently, and effectively to remove the threat and achieve regulatory requirements. In these situations, it is easy to become rattled and make blunders, so many companies create their own Incident Response Plans (IRPs).

The plan defines roles and responsibilities, including the methods to properly communicate, document, and resolve an unwanted incident.

How Does Incident Response Function?

Incident response usually begins when a security team gets an alert from a security information and event management system.

Team members must confirm that the alerted event qualifies as a hostile incident, isolate infected systems, and eliminate threats. Assume the situation is severe and takes a considerable time to resolve. In this instance, enterprises may need to recover backup data, deal with a ransomware attack, or tell customers that the incident has hacked their data.

As a result, individuals other than the cybersecurity team are involved in the response and resolution operations. In addition, privacy specialists, lawyers, and business leaders will collaborate to create the organisation’s response to an incident and its consequences.

How to Establish an Incident Response Plan

Developing an incident response plan may seem overwhelming, but it can significantly lower a business’s risk if hit by a major incident.

1. Identify and prioritise assets: The first step in developing an incident response plan is identifying what a company is safeguarding. The primary objective of this plan is to document an organisation’s critical data, including where it is stored and its value to the business.
2. Determine potential risks: Every organisation faces distinct dangers. Hence, security teams should learn about their organisation’s most serious vulnerabilities and consider how a threat actor can exploit them.
3. Develop response procedures: Established procedures will help ensure the IRP team can quickly and effectively handle an unwanted attack or incident. These processes typically begin by defining what constitutes an event and then planning the measures a team should take to identify, isolate, and recover from the incident, including protocols for documenting decisions and gathering evidence.
4. Create an incident response team: Create a cross-functional team that will understand response processes and mobilise in the event of an incident. Organisations should ensure roles are clearly defined among their members and account for nontechnical functions that can help in communication and liability choices. Additionally, organisations should include personnel on the executive team who will advocate for the team’s interests at the highest levels of the organisation.
5. Define communication plan: A communication plan will eliminate the guessing of when and how to inform those within and outside of the organisation about the status of a particular incident. A response plan can consider numerous scenarios to determine when an IRP team should alert executives, the entire company, customers, the media, or other external stakeholders.
6. Train employees: Threat actors commonly target employees at all levels of the organisation, especially the ones that show signs of incompetency, which is why it is essential that every worker understands the response plan and knows what to do if they suspect that they have been the victim of an attack. Therefore, organisations should periodically test their employees to confirm they can spot phishing emails and make it easy to notify the incident response team if they inadvertently click on a bad link or open a compromised attachment.

Incident Response Plan’s Importance

A significant attack not only disrupts an organisation’s operations but also harms the company’s reputation among consumers and the community, and it may result in legal implications. Everything affects the entire cost, including how quickly the security team responds to the incident and how executives become transparent about it.

On the other hand, companies that conceal the extent of the damage from customers and governments or that fail to address the situation adequately may violate the legislation. These types of errors are more likely when people lack a plan. Hence, there is a risk that people would make reckless judgments out of panic, which can harm a company.

An established plan informs people on what they should do in each attack scenario, allowing them to avoid improvising during the actual event of an attack. Furthermore, suppose the public has any questions after the recovery. In that case, the business will be able to demonstrate precisely how it responded, assuring customers that it took the situation seriously and took the required precautions to prevent a worst-case scenario.

Preparing for a dangerous incident is critical to protecting an organisation against attacks. Establishing an internal incident response team will assure a company that they will be prepared if their company becomes a victim of a threat actor.

How can iZOOlogic help my Company or Organisation?

Find out how iZOOlogic can provide a proper IRP through our Incident Response solutions under our Threat Management Services.

To find out more about how iZOOlogic can help protect your company’s cyber security, schedule a demo.