Cyber Incident Response Plan: A Comprehensive Guide

Cyber Incident Response Plan: A Comprehensive Guide

Introduction

A Guide to Cyber Incident Response Plan

What is Cyber Incident Response? The term "Incident," describes an issue, a conflict, or an actual incident, which describes a data breach or a cyberattack. And the term "Incident Response," as it is almost clear already, refers to the process of handling such incidents, including the steps taken by organizations in an attempt to manage their consequences.

Organizations in the information security, cyber security, and business fields have lots of data to protect due to the fear of an easy data breach in this modern era. The privacy of data is the key that is to be protected and secured. And since performing an effective incident response is a very complex task, incident response planning is necessary.

Many organizations use NIST’s Computer Security Incident Handling Guide as a base reference for their system security’s incident response planning. For any organization to plan for an incident response, they must first understand the information security risks that must be focused on and rectified. And by understanding such possibilities, identifying new attacks and advanced risks becomes easy and can be prevented in earlier stages.

NIST suggests, "Proactively sharing such information among organizations regarding these signs of attacks is the most effective way to identify any of these potential risks of attacks."

 

Cyber Incident Response Plan - Steps to follow

For creating a detailed response plan for cyber incidents, there are a few phases that you have to look after. In the following content, you will learn what makes your response plan an effective one. Just as the complexity increases for big business types, some of these steps might not suit your business type.

Cyber Incident Response Plan

These are the basic steps that will help you gain a basic idea after practicing, which in turn helps in developing an incident plan format suitable for your business. Now let’s look at each step and understand them.

– Preparation

Data breaches can happen at any instance of a project or at any instance of data storage at any business. To plan for such incident responses, it is important to first be prepared in advance by analyzing such occurrences. By preparing for such instances, organizations can determine the response to an incident from their Emergency Response Team.

Responding to an incident also involves concepts like organization policy, documentation, a response plan, training, access to tools, and a few other such ones. Together with training, you should perform a regular audit to ensure the sensitivity of the data and to take adequate steps to respond to an incident.

– Identification

This phase of incident response planning deals with detecting incidents so that responding instantly reduces the amount of damage. Employees from the emergency response team and the IT security team collect information about event occurrences by analyzing data logs, detecting data errors, and using monitoring tools to detect and determine incident occurrences and scoops.

This gathered information will be utilized as the process progresses. This information is then rectified and filtered to identify a potentially risky incident. Based on the type of incident, certain precautions and measures will be taken.

– Limitation

When an incident has taken place, it is very important to limit the information and contain the identification. The main objective of this third phase is to limit the information about the identified incident and prevent it from posing any further potential damage.

This phase is all about taking the necessary precautions by determining the type of incident that has occurred. Depending on the type of incident that occurred, remove the malicious hacker from your systems or isolate the data that has already been compromised.

– Eradication

This stage of performing a successful incident response involves eliminating the danger and restoring the impacted systems to their original condition, ideally with the least amount of data loss possible.

The details will depend once again on the sort of occurrence, but at this point you need to figure out how the information was compromised and how to eliminate the danger.

For instance, you would get rid of the malicious software and separate the areas of your organization that were compromised if you were infected with malware. You would have to freeze their account if the attack happened as a result of a malicious hacker gaining access to an employee's login information.

The major activities involved are making sure that the right procedures have been followed up to this point, including measures that not only eliminate the malicious content but also guarantee that the afflicted systems are entirely clean.

– Recovery

The key activities connected with this stage of incident response are testing, monitoring, and validating systems as they are put back into production to ensure that they are not re-infected or compromised. The choice of the time and date for operations to resume, the testing and verification of the compromised systems, keeping an eye out for unusual behaviors, and the use of tools for testing, monitoring, and validating system behavior are all part of this phase.

After you've eliminated the threat, you can proceed to the penultimate step of responding to a cyber-incident, which is to put your systems back online.

Cyber Incident Response Plan

Depending on the situation, this could be simpler or more complicated, but it's still a crucial step that needs to be taken seriously. You can continue to be vulnerable to such attacks without a sufficient recovery procedure, which would increase the harm.

Once the issue has been resolved, you should test and keep an eye on the affected systems as part of the recovery process. By doing this, you can make sure the measures you implement are effective and have a chance to make any necessary corrections.

– Conclusion

The phase of incident response known as lessons learned is crucial because it aids in educating and enhancing future incident response efforts. Organizations can update their incident response plans at this stage with details that may have been overlooked during the incident as well as thorough documentation that will serve as information for potential future occurrences. Clear summaries of the entire incident are provided in lessons-learned reports, which can be used in recap meetings, as training materials for fresh CIRT recruits, or as a standard against which to measure other incidents.

Every stage of the procedure should be evaluated. You should talk about what occurred, why it occurred, what you did to control the situation, and what could have been done differently. One to two weeks should pass between the security incident and the time of this discussion, allowing ample time for everyone to reflect on the event after the fact while still keeping it fresh in their minds.

This stage's goal is to prevent inefficiencies from happening in the future rather than to criticize team members for past errors. If the process failed, it could be because the documentation was unclear, the right steps weren't specified, or the workforce wasn't properly trained.

 

Conclusion

Due to the concern over a simple data breach in this day and age, businesses and organizations involved in information security, cyber security, and other related industries have a lot of data to secure. The most important thing to safeguard and maintain is the privacy of data.

Reviewing the incident and looking for chances for improvement is the last stage of the cyber incident response strategy. A meeting should be held with the entire incident response team to discuss the elements of the plan that succeeded and any issues you ran into.

CISSP Certification Training Course

To learn and practice such other cybersecurity concepts and its security objectives, enroll now to Sprintzeal’s CISM Certification Training and get certified as Certified Information Security Manager.

Related courses to checkout:

CISSP Certification Training Course

CISM Certification Training

CISA Certification Training Course

To explore more courses, consider visiting Sprintzeal’s All Courses page.

Subscribe to our Newsletters

Sushmith

Sushmith

Our technical content writer, Sushmith, is an experienced writer, creating articles and content for websites, specializing in the areas of training programs and educational content. His writings are mainly concerned with the most major developments in specialized certification and training, e-learning, and other significant areas in the field of education.

Trending Now


Top 5 COMPELLING REASONS TO GET A CYBER SECURITY CERTIFICATION

ebook

How to Become IT Security Expert with CISSP Certification

ebook

Top 20 Reasons You Should Get a CISSP Certification

ebook

What is CISSP? – Everything about CISSP Certification Explained

ebook

Pass CISSP Exam - How to Clear CISSP Exam in First Attempt 2024 (UPDATED)

ebook

CISSP Certification – Top 25 Career Benefits in 2024

ebook

Cybersecurity – Everything You Need to Know About it

ebook

Updated Google Certification Training Course list 2024

Article

Which Certification is best for Cybersecurity?

ebook

Which Cybersecurity Certification Should I Get First?

ebook

Cysa+ certification – Should you get it?

ebook

List of Top Security Certifications

Article

Easiest Security Certification to Get

ebook

CISM certification cost and career benefits

ebook

Cybersecurity Fundamentals Explained

ebook

ISACA Certifications List 2024

ebook

List of Top Information Security Certifications in 2024

ebook

CISM certification cost details

Article

Mitigate the Cyber-Attack Risks with Best Cyber Security Protocols

ebook

Cybersecurity Interview Questions and Answers 2024

ebook

Top Cybersecurity Software Tools In 2024

ebook

Information Security Analyst - Career, Job Role, and Top Certifications

ebook

Cyber Security Analyst - How to Become, Job Demand and Top Certifications

ebook

CompTIA A+ Certification Latest Exam Update 2024

Article

What is Data Security - Types, Strategy, Compliance and Regulations

ebook

Data loss Prevention in Cyber Security Explained

ebook

Cybersecurity Controls Explained in Detail

ebook

Cybersecurity Framework - A Complete Guide

ebook

What is Cryptography - A Comprehensive Guide

ebook

Data Leak - What is it, Prevention and Solutions

ebook

Cybersecurity Career Paths Guide

ebook

Future of Cybersecurity - Trends and Scope

ebook

Cyber Security Careers and Outlook - 2024 Guide

ebook

5 Cybersecurity Predictions in 2024 - Trends and Challenges

ebook

Scope for Cybersecurity in 2024 - Update for 2024

ebook

Ethical Hacking Career: A Career Guide for Ethical Hacker

ebook

Application Security: All You Need To Know

ebook

Cybersecurity Roles - Top Roles and Skills to Consider in 2024

ebook

How to Get Cyber Essentials Certified

ebook

Top 10 Cyber Security Threats and How to Prevent Them

ebook

Top 10 Network Scanning Tools of 2024

ebook

Information Assurance Careers - Exploring Career Paths

ebook

What is the Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 8140

ebook

Cybersecurity Mesh Architecture: What It Is and How to Build It

ebook

What is Threat Modeling? Methodologies, Types, and Steps

ebook

What is Digital Forensics? Types, Process & Challenges

ebook

Information Assurance Model in Cybersecurity

ebook

How to Become an Information Security Analyst Salary, Skills, and More

Article

List of Top Department of Defense (DoD) Approved 8570 Certification Courses

ebook

Top 5 Ransomware Attacks to Watch Out for in 2024

ebook

Job Prospects for DoD Certified Professionals: A Pathway to Success in cybersecurity

ebook

10 Biggest Data Breaches of the 21st Century

ebook

What is a Cybersecurity Incident?-Types, Impact, Response Process and More

ebook

Cyber Security Planning - A Detailed Guide for Risk Mitigation

ebook

What is Cybercrime? Exploring Types, Examples, and Prevention

ebook

Recent Cyber Attacks & Data Breaches in 2024

ebook

Cybersecurity Strategy: Building a Strong Defense for Business

ebook

Cybercrime Impacts On Business: 6 Major Effects

ebook

5 Types of Cyber Attacks You Should Be Aware of in 2024

ebook

Cloud Cyber Attacks: Causes, Types, Prevention and Protection

ebook

Cloud Malware: Types of Attacks and Security Measure

ebook

Cyber Attack Statistics and Trends to Know in 2024

ebook

List Of Top Cybersecurity Threats In 2024

ebook

Safeguarding Digital Domain: 10 Most Common Cybercrimes

ebook

Demystifying Cloud-Based Cyber Attacks: A Comprehensive Guide

ebook

Prevent Cyber Attacks: Strategies to Protect Your Digital Assets

ebook

List of Top 10 Cybersecurity Careers in 2024

ebook

Top 20 Cybersecurity Trends to Watch Out for in 2024

Article

How to Become Cybersecurity Engineer

Article

Understanding Risk assessment in audit planning

Article

Fundamentals of Risk-Based Auditing: A Strategic Framework

Article

Risk-based Audit Planning Guide for Beginners

ebook

Top 8 Types of Cybersecurity Jobs and Salary Insights

Article

A Comprehensive Guide to Building Risk-Based Internal Audit Plan

Article

Risk-Based Internal Auditing Approaches: 7 Steps to Explore

Article

CompTIA Security+ 601 vs. 701: Understanding Key Differences

Article

Why and How to Perform a Risk-Based Internal Audit

Article

Risk-Based Auditing Techniques Explained

ebook

Trending Posts

Top 10 Network Scanning Tools of 2024

Top 10 Network Scanning Tools of 2024

Last updated on Mar 19 2024

Cysa+ certification – Should you get it?

Cysa+ certification – Should you get it?

Last updated on Nov 21 2023

What is the Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 8140

What is the Department of Defense (DoD) Directive 8140

Last updated on May 31 2023

Cloud Malware: Types of Attacks and Security Measure

Cloud Malware: Types of Attacks and Security Measure

Last updated on Aug 7 2023

How to Become an Information Security Analyst Salary, Skills, and More

How to Become an Information Security Analyst Salary, Skills, and More

Last updated on Jun 22 2023

Top 10 Cyber Security Threats and How to Prevent Them

Top 10 Cyber Security Threats and How to Prevent Them

Last updated on Apr 12 2023