How to Create an Incident Response Procedure

Posted 2023-01-20 13:55:20

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Introduction

If you are a small business owner or IT professional, it’s important to keep your company protected from cyber attacks. When an incident occurs, the best way to respond is by having an established procedure in place that can be followed by everyone involved. There are several steps you can take to create this type of plan:

Identify threats and risks

Threats and risks are not the same thing. A threat is an event that may occur and cause harm, whereas a risk is the likelihood that this will happen. For example, if there was a fire in your office building, this would be considered a threat; however, if you had water damage from flooding caused by your own negligence (such as leaving the basement door open), then this would be considered a risk.

When developing an incident response plan for your organization's systems or network infrastructure:

Identify threats and risks using information gathered from both internal sources (like employee interviews) and external sources (like industry surveys).

Scope the process

The first step in creating an incident response plan is to define the scope of it. It's important that you don't over-scope or under-scope your plan, because doing so could result in significant costs and time lost due to missteps.

For example, if you're going to use a third party for external security services (such as firewalls), make sure they know exactly what resources are needed for each specific task or project that needs their help — whether it be hardware or software licenses; operating systems; databases; etc.. If this information isn't provided upfront when hiring these vendors then there could be delays along the way as they try figure out how much data needs backing up before starting work on those projects themselves (and certainly won't want them running into any problems).

Create incident response team roles

As you begin the process of creating your incident response procedure, it's important to consider who will be involved and how they'll interact. It's not just about making sure that everyone is on the same page; it's also about ensuring that each person has their own set of responsibilities.

Who will be responsible for what?
Who is responsible for being the point of contact if an incident arises?
How do you escalate issues when they arise (e.g., via email or phone call)?

Create a plan that escalates incidents

You will want to define the type of incidents that need to be escalated, as well as how you will escalate them.

For example: If your incident team receives a report about an employee leaking company information, what would be the first step? Do they call the legal department or HR? Or do they contact their supervisor first? How long before someone calls them back if no one answers? What happens when there's no response from anyone on your team within 24 hours (or whatever timeframe you've decided upon)?

There are many questions like these and more in creating an incident response procedure. You may want to consider creating separate templates for each type of incident and assigning each template with one person responsible for resolving it promptly without delay.

Develop response procedures

Once you've defined the types of incidents that can occur, you need to develop response procedures for each type. For example, if your organization has been targeted by a malicious hacker and they've compromised their network, there are several possible responses:

You could file an incident report with your company's security team or law enforcement agency.
You could call in IT support or another specific team within your organization who would handle security tasks related to this incident (e.g., hiring more employees to bolster existing resources).
You could also contact external agencies such as the FBI if necessary—but only after doing some preliminary research first!

Develop a chain of command

The chain of command is a process by which the management of an organization decides how to respond to incidents. It's important for communication and decision making—but if not documented, it can be difficult to identify who has authority over a given incident.

Define who is involved in the incident response process

The next step is to identify who will be involved in your incident response process. This includes all of the following:

Who should be involved in the incident response process?
Who shouldn’t be involved in the incident response process?

Define who is involved with an incident response team

Who is involved in the incident response process?
Who is in charge of the incident response team?
Who is responsible for monitoring the network for suspicious activity and responding to it, or reporting it?

Define what an incident is

An incident is a security event that affects the confidentiality, integrity and availability of an organization's information or information systems. An incident can be intentional, accidental or unintentional.

In the context of a cyberattack, an incident response plan defines how you will respond to incidents. This may include:

Identifying what caused the attack so that you can prevent it from happening again
Detecting and responding to new attacks as they emerge

Define security incident categories

You must define the categories and severity of each incident.

The classification scheme should be standardized, so that all responders are using the same language when they're communicating with each other. Use a standard coding system like NIST's Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). This will help ensure that your security teams have consistent terminology to use in reporting incidents, as well as better understand what they're dealing with during an attack or breach.

Once you've decided on your classification scheme and established response procedures for each category, it's time to consider how you'll handle each type of incident once it occurs—and maybe even before it happens!

Outline incident response procedures for every team of employees (e.g., IT, sales, marketing, HR)

Once you have a plan, it is important to review it and make any necessary changes. It's also critical to make sure everyone on your team knows what their role is in case of an incident.

Identify the team that is responsible for incident response: This can be either IT or another department like marketing, sales or HR. In some cases these teams may need different types of training depending on who they work with (e.g., marketing has more familiarity with social media than technical teams).
Outline escalation procedures for every team member: Some groups will want different levels of escalation depending on their job responsibilities (e.g., if someone falls ill during work hours then they should be handled differently than when someone leaves early because they had an appointment). This can be done by creating separate escalation lists so there are clear guidelines as well as ensuring all employees know where they fit into the process if something goes wrong while working together at one location such as an office building conference room table where everyone sits around together during meetings etc..

Takeaway:

In this article, we’ve covered how to create an incident response procedure. This process is essential in any organization that has been breached or attacked. It allows your team to respond quickly and effectively while also ensuring they have all the information they need to make informed decisions about how to proceed.

The takeaway:

Define what the takeaway is
Explain how the takeaway relates back into other sections of your blog post (or article)

Conclusion

Incident response procedures are one of the most important things you can do to protect your business. If you don’t have them in place, there’s a high risk of something bad happening and causing serious damage to your organization. The more prepared you are for incidents, the better off everyone will be—including yourself!

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