Incident Response
What is an Incident Response?
A robust incident response program helps businesses identify, prioritize, contain, and eradicate cyberattacks. In the event of an incident or breach, a company or organization must act to identify it, mitigate damages, notify those affected by the attack, and remove any harmful malware that may be in your internal network.
The importance of an Incident Response plan
According to the 2022 IBM Cost of a data breach report, companies that had an incident response plan in place saved an average of 2.66 million USD over those that didn’t. While developing a plan and finding a breach solutions partner may imply some costs, it’s likely cheaper than being caught without one.
In addition, 60% of companies that experienced a breach had increases in prices passed on to customers. Although incident response plans can’t eliminate the threat of breaches, reducing harm and costs to consumers is an effective way to limit reputational damage. Beyond reputation, an incident response plan can provide proof to investors and stakeholders that the company acted responsibly when an attack occurred and had taken necessary steps in advance to limit damage.
What are the Incident Response steps to take?
There are different types of breaches and all of them can be severe and complex, so having an effective plan to respond to them is important, but to effectively do so an organization must understand what an incident response plan requires.
The first step if you have not done so already is to find an incident or breach response partner. Ideally, this step should be completed before you have experienced a security incident, so that you know who to look to as soon as you identify a breach in your company.
You should also have a team within your organization that you have assembled before any incidents occur. This way you will know who will be working on the breach internally and communicating with your incident response partner. Departments that should be included, or at least considered to be a part of this team are IT, HR, Legal, Risk Management, and Executive.
If you have already done the previous two steps and notified your incident response partner, the next steps should proceed as follows:
- Identify the type of incident that has occurred and it’s severity.
- Contain and mitigate any further damage.
- Determine who may be affected by the incident, including consumers.
- Eliminate the core cause of the breach and work through any other internal issues created by the attack.
- Follow through with any other steps that may be recommended by your IT and legal teams to prevent further damages.
What’s next
Once a breach has been resolved, it’s important to look at your existing cybersecurity network to make sure there aren’t any lingering damages. This is also a good time to come up with a strategy to prevent breaches occurring in the future and consider if your security network needs further reinforcement. An effective way to see if there are any issues that need resolving is to conduct a review of your response and note any areas that could have been improved upon.
If the type of breach that occurred was due to human error, such as a phishing attack, then providing additional security training for employees is a step worth taking.
Start your Incident Response plan today
Don’t wait for an incident to occur before you begin looking for an incident response partner. ZeroFox Incident Response is trusted by over 1,000 customers and can provide your company with the tools necessary to mitigate harm to your company and reputation. Our experienced team will mobilize an efficient and timely response to any adverse cybersecurity event, reducing the impact and time to recover for an organization.