How to Execute a Cyber Incident Response Plan

The incident response plan is very important for modern companies. This plan will help companies in dealing with various cyber incidents. There are various elements involved in these incidents. Some of these elements can be unexpected and unknown. If you already know the event that is causing the incident, then you should prevent it. Sometimes these incidents can cause panic in your company. The panic can reduce the effectiveness of your response. This plan will help you in establishing the tempo for the future process. The main aim of any CSRP is to understand the cause of an incident. Also, you need to impact of these incidents on your organization. This will help you in decreasing the impact of these incidents. You need to ensure that you can prevent the same incident in the future. In this article, we are going to give you some tips that will help you in executing your plan.

1. Detect the Cyber Incident

This is the most important step of any response plan. First, you need to detect the cyber incident. After that, you can take further action for decreasing its impact. You can use various things for detecting these incidents. If you are using discrete systems, then they will generate alarms. You need to investigate these alarms for detecting the problem. Companies can also use antivirus, endpoint protecting services and Firewalls for detecting these incidents. The Intrusion-detection systems or IDS will help you in identifying intruders in your network. There are various network monitoring tools that will help you in monitoring your network. Also, you can use public cloud systems for generating alarms. You can tune these sources for generating different alarms.

SIEM or Security Information and Event Management

Many organizations are also using SIEM or Security Information and Event Management. In this, they can collect the data from different sources into a single source. These systems can also use relevant data as network data and threat feeds. You should also check your system for vulnerabilities. All these events will be checked by this single system. This system can generate a high-confidence alarm. Some of these systems also have search functionality. Thus, you can search for incidents. This will help you in responding to incidents quickly.

These detections can sometimes can from individuals. Your employees should be vigilant enough to identify cyber incidents. You should have a system for reporting incidents. For example, some companies are using a ticket system for reporting incidents. These reports can come from the general public, vendors, and clients. Thus, you should provide contact information to your customers. They can use this information for reporting incidents.

However, it is difficult to define a cyber-incident. Most large companies face an attack every day. There are hackers that are trying to do brute force attack. Also, these companies are always looking for vulnerabilities in their system. Sometimes your users can receive spoofed emails. However, these incidents are not actually a cyber-incident. Organizations only consider those incidents that break the CIA triad of their system. Thus, it is important to determine a baseline for these incidents.

2. Notify your cybersecurity team

You need to notify your team about the cyber-incident. Some companies also have a special team known as CIRT or Cyber Incident Response Team. This team has members from different departments of the organization. The members of this team should have deep technical knowledge. This team mostly consists of the IT department and management. However, it can also consist of PR, HR, and Legal resources. If you have a good team, then they can quickly check the cyber incident. They can determine the impacts and causes of these incidents.

3. Analyze Data

The CIRT team should analyze the data for validating the incident. This step is done when someone has detected the cyber incident. It is the responsibility of the CIRT team to validate these incidents. They should use their knowledge and resources to check the validity of these incidents. Also, they should have some initial understanding of the impact of these incidents. This will help you in determining the source of these incidents.

4. Documentation

You need to create perfect documentation of any incident. Thus, you should gather data related to the incident. You should find all the indicators of the incident. Also, you need to parse this data. For example, if your customer accounts are hacked, then you should gather all the data related to it. You should mention the date of the attack. Also, you should mention the actions that hackers used performed using the attack. You should mention all the related details in this document. It is important to gather important information like IP addresses and hacker activity windows. You can use this for investigating the scope of the attack. If you have SIEM, then you can use it for searching through these security events. You should have complete information about the cyber incident. This will help you in determining the scope of these incidents. Also, you can determine the impact of these cyber incidents. This document is mostly used by management. They use it for informing about the incident to other departments. Thus, they can divide the responsibilities between different departments.

Conclusion

If you want to have an effective incident response, then you should adequate preparation. This will help you in decreasing the scope of these cyber incidents. You need good technology for detecting these incidents. Also, you must have well-trained staff for dealing with these incidents. You must have a well-informed CIRT team. This team should have members from the IT department, legal, HR, and management department. You can use the technology for quickly determining the scope of the cyber incidents. Thus, you can quickly respond to these cyber incidents. You should also create documentation of cyber incidents. This will help you in understanding the scope of these attacks. Also, you can use it for informing about the incident to your users. If you need more tips regarding CIRP, then you can contact Bleuwire.

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