Even the most secured security systems aren't exempted from cyberattacks, let alone those that aren't secured. Cyberattackers will always try to break into your network and it's your responsibility to stop them.
In the face of such a threat, every second counts. Any delay can expose your sensitive data and that could be hugely damaging. Your response to a security incident makes the difference. An Incident Response (IR) plan allows you to be swift in pushing back against intruders.
What Is an Incident Response Plan?
An incident response plan is a tactical approach to managing a security incident. It consists of procedures and policies in the preparation, evaluation, containment, and recovery from a security incident.
The downtime your organization suffers due to a security incident may linger, depending on the impact of the incident. An incident response plan ensures that your organization bounces back on its feet as soon as possible.
Besides restoring your network back to what it was before the attack, an IR plan helps you to avoid a reoccurrence of the incident.
What Does an Incident Response Plan Look Like?
An incident response plan is more successful when the documented instructions are followed to the latter. For that to happen, your team has to understand the plan and have the necessary skills to perform it.
There are two major incident response frameworks used for managing cyber threats—the NIST and SANS frameworks.
A government agency, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) specializes in various areas of technology and cybersecurity is one of its core services.
The NIST incidence response plan consists of four steps:
- Preparation.
- Detection and Analysis.
- Containment, Eradication, and Recovery.
- Post-Incident Activity.
A private organization, the SysAdmin, Audit, Network and Security (SANS) is known for its expertise in cybersecurity and information training. The SANS IR framework is popularly used in cybersecurity and it involves six steps:
- Preparation.
- Identification.
- Containment.
- Eradication.
- Recovery.
- Lessons Learned.
Although the number of steps offered in the NIST and SANS IR frameworks differs, both are similar. For a more detailed analysis, let's focus on the SANS framework.
1. Preparation
A good IR plan begins with preparation, and both NIST and SANS frameworks acknowledge this. In this step, you review the security measures that you have on the ground currently and their effectiveness.
The review process involves a risk assessment of your network to discover any vulnerabilities that may exist. You have to identify your IT assets and prioritize them accordingly by giving utmost importance to the systems containing your most sensitive data.
Building a strong team and assigning roles to each member is a function of the preparation stage. Offer everyone the information and resources they need to respond to a security incident promptly.
2. Identification
Having created the right environment and team, it's time to detect any threats that may exist in your network. You can do this with the use of threat intelligence feeds, firewalls, SIEM, and IPS to monitor and analyze your data for indicators of attack.
If an attack is detected, you and your team need to determine the nature of the attack, its source, capacity, and other components needed to prevent a breach.
3. Containment
In the containment phase, the goal is to isolate the attack and render it powerless before it causes any damage to your system.
Containing a security incident effectively requires an understanding of the incident and the degree of damage it can cause to your system.
Back up your files before commencing the containment process so you don’t lose sensitive data in the course of it. It’s important that you preserve forensic evidence for further investigation and legal matters.
4. Eradication
The eradication phase involves the removal of the threat from your system. Your goal is to restore your system to the condition it was in before the incident occurred. If that’s impossible, you try to achieve something close to its previous condition.
Restoring your system may require several actions including wiping the hard drives, upgrading the software versions, preventing the root cause, and scanning the system to remove malicious content that may exist.
5. Recovery
You want to make sure that the eradication stage was successful, so you need to perform more analyses to confirm that your system is completely void of any threats.
Once you are sure that the coast is clear, you need to test-run your system in preparation for it to go live. Pay close attention to your network even as it is live to be sure that nothing is amiss.
6. Lesson Learned
Preventing a security breach from recurring entails taken note of the things that went wrong and correcting them. Every stage of the IR plan should be documented as it contains vital information about possible lessons that can be learned from it.
Having gathered all the information, you and your team should ask yourselves some key questions including:
- What exactly happened?
- When did it happen?
- How did we deal with the incident?
- What steps did we take in its response?
- What have we learned from the incident?
Best Practices for an Incident Response Plan
Adopting either the NIST or SANS incident response plan is a solid way to tackle cyberthreats. But to get great results, there are certain practices that you need to uphold.
Identify Critical Assets
Cyberattackers go for the kill; they target your most valuable assets. You need to identify your critical assets and prioritize them in your plan.
In the face of an incident, your first port of call should be your most valuable asset to prevent attackers from accessing or damaging your data.
Establish Effective Communication Channels
The flow of communication in your plan can make or break your response strategy. Ensure that everyone involved has adequate information at every point to take appropriate actions.
Waiting for an incident to occur before streamlining your communication is risky. Putting it in place beforehand will instill confidence in your team.
Keep It Simple
A security incident is exhausting. Members of your team will likely be frantic, trying to save the day. Don’t make their job more difficult with complex details in your IR plan.
Keep it as simple as possible.
While you want the information in your plan to be easy to understand and execute, don’t water it down with overgeneralization. Create specific procedures on what team members should do.
Create Incident Response Playbooks
A tailor-made plan is more effective than a generic plan. To get better results, you need to create an IR playbook for tackling the different kinds of security incidents.
The playbook gives your response team a step-by-step guide on how to manage a particular cyber-threat thoroughly instead of just touching the surface.
Test the Plan
The most effective indent response plan is one that is continuously tested and certified to be effective.
Don’t create a plan and forget about it. Carry out security drills periodically to identify loopholes that cyber attackers may exploit.
Adopting a Proactive Security Approach
Cyberattackers take individuals and organizations unaware. Nobody wakes up in the morning, expecting their network to be hacked. While you may not wish a security incident upon yourself, there is a possibility that it will happen.
The least you can do is to be proactive by creating an incident response plan just in case cyberattackers choose to target your network.