Beyond the Breach: Best Practices for Cybersecurity Incident Response Planning
By now, most business decision-makers recognize that cybersecurity is a mission-critical discipline. Unfortunately, businesses typically place major emphasis on preventing cyberattacks and less on mitigating their effects. This can result in an increased time to mitigate an attack, directly contributing to higher losses caused by the attack.
Therefore, it is imperative for businesses to invest additional resources in cybersecurity incident response planning, ensuring swift and effective responses to cyber threats. This preparedness can be the decisive factor between a catastrophic outcome and minimal disruption to operations. Here are some best practices to consider when developing a cybersecurity incident response plan.
Begin With a Risk Assessment
The main purpose of a cybersecurity incident response plan is to formulate a step-by-step response to any potential cyberattack. Therefore, the first task a business must undertake before developing such a plan is to determine the types of cyberattacks to which they are most vulnerable. To achieve this, a risk assessment is necessary. The subsequent steps outline the process.
1. Catalogue Assets
Conduct an inventory of all business technology assets. This should include a comprehensive infrastructure diagram that outlines the interconnectivity between devices. Additionally, it should identify high-value targets, such as authentication servers or any components that might facilitate an attacker’s path to a broader network breach.
2. Identify Relevant Threats
Next, using the asset database, identify the most likely threats to the specific hardware and software in question. Resources such as the MITRE ATT&CK database and information from the Cyber Threat Alliance can assist in this effort.
3. Gameplan Attack Fallout
With the likely threats now identified, simulate the potential fallout from each. This should include a description of the vulnerability, what it may grant an attacker access to, and how it would impact the business.
4. Rank by Attack Likelihood and Severity
Finally, create a threat matrix with two axes, ranking each potential attack by likelihood and severity on a scale of one to five, with five indicating the highest likelihood or severity.
Design Responses for Critical Threats
The next step is to create individual response plans for the identified threats, starting with those that pose the greatest risk to the business. At this stage, it is crucial to generate documentation for each plan, including explicit steps to take, communication methods to use, and designated personnel for incident response teams. To streamline the process, utilize a response plan template and fill in the relevant information.
As part of each plan, it is important to include the right staffing for each incident response team. Regardless of the threat type, each team should consist of a designated leader, a communications point person, a principal investigator, and a business liaison. The leader should be someone with appropriate cybersecurity knowledge and a comprehensive understanding of the business’s technology infrastructure. Working in conjunction with the principal investigator—typically a cybersecurity specialist—they will determine the size and scope of the team required to respond to a given threat.
Conduct Response Simulations
For each incident type, it is a good idea to conduct simulations that test the efficacy of the relevant response plan. This should include a practice run of every step in the plan to identify any response deficiencies and refine the response playbook. It is also advisable to repeat the exercise until everyone involved knows the plan thoroughly and can execute their role flawlessly. Additionally, conducting tabletop exercises covering each response plan quarterly or bi-annually is prudent to maintain the team’s response proficiency.
Build an Early Warning System
After writing and testing each response plan, the next step is to invest in the technology necessary to identify relevant threats as early as possible. Today, there are various AI-powered threat-detection platforms that enable early warnings of potential cyberattacks in progress. This early detection is essential for minimizing data loss and limiting the severity of the damage. It also allows some leeway in the execution of an incident response plan.
It is also important to customize the response plans to account for the availability of early warnings. For example, if the planned response for a given threat does not include how to halt an attack in its earliest stages, it would squander the advantage the warning could have provided. Ideally, every response plan should have clear intervention points spelled out to allow the response team to pick up the game plan at any stage of an attack without wasting time on meaningless steps.
Update and Train Continuously
Lastly, it is important to recognize that cybersecurity incident response plans cannot and should not remain static. The nature and specifics of the threats a business will face are ever-evolving. That means response plans must constantly evolve along with them. According to most cybersecurity experts, updating each plan at least once per year is necessary to keep them effective. Otherwise, a once-viable response plan can become counterproductive, wasting valuable time and resources on steps that will not bring an attack to a halt.
This is also why it is a good idea to conduct regular response drills, at least as often as the plans receive updates. These should be live, not tabletop, drills that include all the relevant stakeholders performing their part in each plan as realistically as is feasible without disrupting business operations. This is necessary to keep response team members informed about anything added or removed from the plans they need to execute. It also helps keep their skills sharp and makes their actions during a real cybersecurity incident as close to automatic as possible.
Moreover, for any response plans that involve transitioning to backup infrastructure, it is wise to conduct live, no-warning execution drills at least once per year. Doing so can make the difference between maintaining business continuity during a cybersecurity incident and dealing with lengthy—and costly—downtime.
Your Trusted Cybersecurity Partner
Indeed, not every business has staff equipped with the essential cybersecurity skills necessary for executing an effective incident response plan. That is why Outsource IT offers business IT security services, providing customizable support tailored to the unique needs of each business. We can provide everything from managed threat detection and response to consulting services for the development and execution of response plans. To find out how Outsource IT can help your business with its cybersecurity needs, contact one of our knowledgeable account managers today.
