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Why Have An Incident Response Strategy?
Nearly every organization will eventually come under attack from hackers and system attacks that threaten its security.
An effective incident response strategy can lessen the impact of breaches, reduce fines and negative press, and help your company return more quickly to business as usual. If your organization follows PCI DSS compliance standards, prepare an incident response strategy with all employees trained to deal quickly with breaches.
With an established strategy, employees will easily scramble around trying to figure out what steps are needed, making mistakes along the way.
If employees delete systems before creating images of compromised ones, it could become impossible to determine what has transpired or prevent further infections from recurring.
The Phases Of An Incident Response Strategy
An incident response plan must include several phases to effectively respond to suspected data breaches. These stages include:
- Phase I: Prepare
- Phase 2.: Identification
- Phase 3.: contain
- Phase 4: Eradicate
- Phase 5, Recover
- Phase 6, Revision
Phase 1: Prepare
This phase is of vital importance in safeguarding your organization. Included herein are these steps:
- Make sure your employees understand their roles and responsibilities regarding incident response.
- Tabletop exercises are a good way to test your Strategy.
- Be sure to approve and fund all aspects of the incident response strategy (e.g., training, hardware, and software resources).
Phase 2: Identity
Identification involves ascertaining whether you have been compromised through monitoring any variations from normal operations or activities.
Organizations typically become aware of breaches through one of four avenues.
- Breach detection typically happens internally (for instance, by reviewing logs from intrusion detection systems, alerting systems, or system anomalies or malware traces)
- Your bank will notify you if there has been any credit card fraud by reviewing customer reports of credit card theft and misuse.
- Law enforcement discovered this breach while investigating card information theft.
- Your company received an anonymous complaint from a customer alleging they used their credit card at your establishment before fraudulent charges began appearing on it.
Phase 3: Contain
Of course, any organization must act quickly when becoming aware of a possible breach in security. It is important to take appropriate steps or involve relevant personnel to avoid losing important forensic data that allows forensic investigators to pinpoint when and how an attack happened and develop strategies against future cyber attacks.
Remember:
- Don't panic
- Do not make rash decisions.
- Wait to wipe and reinstall your system (yet).
Phase 4: Eradicate
Once a breach has been contained, all policies, procedures, or technologies which caused it must be discontinued immediately.
Malware must be eliminated, systems must be hardened with upgrades as quickly as possible, and patches must be applied for updating purposes.
Be thorough whether conducting your system audit on your own or with assistance. Any trace of malware or security flaws left within your system could result in sensitive data loss if left uncovered.
Phase 5: Reconstruction
Recovery after a breach involves restoring affected mobile devices and systems into your business environment without fear of further breaches occurring.
It's vitally important that businesses and systems return without further interruption from breaches occurring in the future. After the cause of the breach is discovered and eliminated, all systems should be strengthened, patched, or upgraded as necessary and tested to confirm their integrity.
Review Phase:
Meet with your incident response team to review what has been learned from the forensic investigation as you plan for future attacks.
Review past events as you consider future ones. Here you will be able to assess every detail of a breach - what worked and didn't work in terms of response strategy - as you review and modify your incident Response Strategy.
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How Do You Develop And Implement A Strategy For Incident Response?
Be ready when responding to data breaches: taking control is vital in safeguarding your brand from potentially devastating impacts of data leaks on reputational harm.
An effective incident response plan allows your organization to quickly respond and mitigate damage following any data breach incident, providing your staff with an action plan and saving valuable time in recovery efforts.
Step 1 - Identify And Prioritize Assets
Begin by identifying where your organization stores its most vital data assets. Assess which could cause substantial financial damages should it become stolen or damaged.
Quantifying your assets' values will enable you to justify and demonstrate to executives the significance of certain assets within their security budgets, showing what needs to be protected and why.
Doing this allows them to see why certain assets require protection.
Step 2: Identify Potential Risks
Assess the current risks and cyber threats facing your system. Remember, each organization faces unique cyber threats.
Erroneous code may pose the greatest danger to organizations that manage online data; Internet access could pose similar potential threats if offering WiFi to customers at brick-and-mortar establishments.
Some organizations focus more on physical security, while others primarily deploy remote access applications.
Here are some examples of possible risks.
- External media: Executes from removable media, e.g., flash drive or CD
- Attrition: Uses brute force techniques, such as DDoS attacks and password cracking
- Web: Carried out through a website or web-based program (such as drive-by downloading)
- Email security: Run through an email attachment or message (such as malware)
- Imitation: Replacing something benign with malicious code (e.g., SCL injection potential attacks or rogue wireless access points)
- Theft or loss: Theft or loss of a computing device (e.g., laptop, smartphone).
Step 3: Establish Procedures
An employee could make security mistakes that compromise your company without proper procedures. Your data breach policies and procedures must address the following:
- A baseline of normal activities to identify breaches
- How to detect and contain a breach
- How to record the information about a breach
- Communication and Notification Strategy
- Defense Approach
- Employee Training
Over time, your policies should adapt to suit your organization's unique requirements. Some organizations may need a stronger notification and communication strategy, while others might benefit from outside assistance.
All organizations should focus on employee education (i.e., security policies and procedures).
Step 4: Set Up A Response Team
Once a breach occurs, you should establish an incident response team to coordinate all actions taken by your organization and minimize its effects.
It should coordinate resources in an emergency security breach to minimize its severity while rapidly restoring operations as soon as possible.
The following are some of the roles that a team must have:
- Team leader
- Lead investigator
- Communications leader
- C-suite executive
- It director
- Public Relations
- Documents and timeline leader
- Human Resources
- Legal Representative
- Breach response experts
Ensure that the team responding to any crisis has an in-depth knowledge of all areas of the organization and understands their specific roles within its Strategy.
Each member can bring different skill sets, perspectives, and responsibilities that should all come together simultaneously to manage any potential crisis effectively.
Step 5: Sell The Strategy
Your incident response team must have access to sufficient resources and support to follow its Strategy effectively.
With them, however, their effectiveness may improve significantly. Security must come from the top down; therefore, an organization's CEO, VP, or CTO should understand that incident response strategies must be implemented and enforced across their entire workforce - be they small mom-and-pop shops or large enterprises.
Executive members in enterprise organizations should support your incident response team, while management must agree to provide additional resources and funding for incident response.
When responding to incidents in smaller organizations, additional support must come from within management.
Focus on highlighting the advantages of your Strategy (financial and brand benefits) when presenting it. A poorly handled data breach could do irreparable harm to your brand image and reputation, creating irreparable harm for which no repair will be available.
Your incident response strategy will be easier to develop, implement and practice if your goals are expressed clearly.
Step 6 - Train Your Staff
More than just having an incident response planning enough, your employees need to understand it and know what steps should be taken in case of a data breach.
Employees need to understand their role in upholding company security. Employees should recognize potential threats such as phishing emails, spear phishing attempts, and social engineering attempts.
Test the skills of your staff through tabletop activities (i.e., simulated real-world scenarios led by an instructor).
While tabletop exercises may take time and money to implement, they're essential in equipping employees for data breaches by familiarizing them with their respective incident response roles and testing them through hacking scenarios.
Your staff can improve their response to incidents by testing them - without risk to assets! Employees in their daily work routine may need to remember vital security issues knowledge learned at training, potentially jeopardizing the company security team.
Also Read: Establishing An It Incident Response Plan
What To Include In An Incident Response Strategy
Creating an incident response strategy can be daunting, so break it into smaller, manageable steps for maximum effect.
All organizations should include several key items in their Incident Response Strategies, including:
- Emergency contact/communications list
- List of system backup and recovery processes
- Forensic Analysis List
- Jump Bag list
- List of security policy reviews
Emergency Contact/Communications List
Communication is paramount when managing a data breach. That is why you should compile an emergency contact/communications list, including details on who to contact, when, and what message should be conveyed.
When there is a data breach, all relevant parties need to be contacted immediately, such as:
- Response dedicated Team
- Executive Team
- Legal Team
- Forensics company
- Public response Relations
- Affected Individuals
- Law Enforcement
- Merchant processor
Deliberating when and how you will notify cardholders is of critical importance. Many states mandate specific timeframes when notifying customers or law enforcement of incidents affecting cardholders.
It would help if you became acquainted with your state laws regarding mandatory notifications; also, include instructions in your incident management strategy that explain how these should be made.
Your incident response team must develop statements for various audiences. These may include holding announcements, press releases, customer statements, and an internal/employee message.
Preparing emails and talking points could also help speed the response time in case of data breaches.
It would help if you answered questions such as:
- What locations are affected?
- How was it discovered?
- Is there any other data that may be at risk?
- What will be the impact on customers and community?
- What kind of services and assistance will you offer your customers (if any)?
- What will you do to avoid this happening again, and when will you be back on your feet?
Determine who within your company is accountable for notifying of data breaches (this could include breach management firms or C-level executives), as they will need to ensure timely notification as per state requirements and will ultimately be judged heavily upon how quickly and appropriately their responses come.
List Of System Backup And Recovery Processes
Noting down system backup and recovery procedures will assist with dealing with any possible data breach from an administrative side.
Here is what to include in such plans:
- How to disconnect from the Internet? (e.g., who decides whether you disconnect or not)
- Diagrams of system configuration, including information such as device descriptions, IP addresses, and OS information
- Switching to redundant systems while preserving evidence
- Evidence preservation process (e.g., logs, timestamps).
- By taking complete system backups, you can test the system backup and recovery.
- Test and verify any compromised systems to ensure they are fully functional
This list can assist in quickly responding to and protecting against data breaches by backing up systems and safeguarding against further data loss, helping your organization return quickly to normal operations and from data losses.
Forensics Analysis Listen
This list of forensic analysis resources is tailored toward organizations using their investigation resources for internal investigations.
Your forensics team should be capable of recognizing irregular behaviors as well as accessing system security practices logs and event logs; multiple lists may need to be created depending on factors like operating system functionality (server/database etc.).
For your forensic team, you might need the following equipment:
- Data acquisition tools
- Write-blockers
- Clean/wiped USB hard drives
- All the connections that they might have in your environment should be cabled.
- Other forensic analysis tools (such as XWays, EnCase FTK, etc.)
If your organization lacks a computer forensic examiner, consider hiring an external forensics company. Be sure to interview potential firms carefully in advance and complete contracts that ensure someone is available when needed.
This process ensures you'll always have someone experienced on hand when the need arises.
Jump Bag List
Jump Bag lists can help organizations react swiftly in case of breaches; such lists contain all actions employees need to take immediately following a breach, thus helping you organize your Strategy while preventing panicked decisions from leading to costly errors.
Include the following items in your list:
- Keep a journal to record the event's details, such as who, what, and where.
- Contact list for the Incident Response Team
- USB Hard Drives and Write-Blockers
- USB Multi-hub
- Flashlights, pens, notebooks
- Your complete list of documents
- Bootable OS versions on USB or DVD
- Computer and Network Tool Kit
- Hard duplicators with Write-block capability
Security Policy Review List
Reviewing security measures policies will allow you to analyze and learn from breaches by providing insight into response plans, aftermath consequences, and what lessons should be learned or changed moving forward.
Documentation of the following items should be included in your security strategy policy review list:
- Who detected the breach, and by what method?
- The affected systems and their scope
- Data put at potential risk
- How the breach has been contained and eradicated
- Work done or changes made to the systems during recovery
- The areas where the Response Strategy is effective
- Areas for improvement (e.g., which security services controls failed, improvements in security tools awareness programs).
Identification and improvement are of utmost importance in any security control strategy effort, and this list documents every incident: what occurred, what worked well, and what didn't.
An effective incident response strategy depends on its employees following it, so regularly use tabletop exercises or real-life simulations to gauge staff reactions and test how employees will handle potential situations.
Employees can practice their roles during incident response when there's no immediate danger potential threats, providing an ideal way for you to identify gaps in your Strategy (i.e., communication issues)
Three Benefits Of Incident Response Strategy
Three main benefits to creating an emergency response strategy.
1. Reduce Downtime
An effective incident response plan will cut back your company's downtime significantly. Managed service providers develop detailed Action Strategies for each incident to assist their employees and give guidance as to the most suitable response methods to various incidents.
An IT provider will create and upload to the cloud-based server daily for data backup, providing peace of mind knowing your files can be accessed anywhere with internet access.
2. Maintain Public Trust
An effective incident response strategy can go a long way toward maintaining public trust during crises and emergencies.
Recovering data quickly following natural catastrophes, for example, shows your constituents that your business has taken proactive steps toward developing its Business Continuity Strategy.
Data loss can seriously affect any organization and damage its credibility with customers and stakeholders. A provider of IT services will assist your firm in quickly recovering from any crisis, providing quick recovery time frames and IT Security support services as required.
3. Maintain Compliance
Many organizations prioritize compliance in legal and healthcare industries. Data breaches may result in costly fines or lawsuits from regulators.
Businesses cannot ignore industry regulations. Implementing a Business Continuity Strategy and Incident Management will help your company abide by all rules related to its industry while working with an IT service provider who keeps up-to-date on the latest standards will allow your team to create an individualized Strategy tailored to suit its business.
An IT support provider's Business Continuity Strategy can be the ideal way to protect your company against unexpected emergencies.
Managed service providers continuously update your plan to guarantee you can confidently manage any emergency. Employing IT services in today's workplace can help reduce downtime, secure public trust, and remain compliant.Cyber attacks or natural disasters may arise at any moment; IT providers' mission is to safeguard data by creating an incident Response Strategy with your business in mind.
Types Of Tabletop Exercises
Discussion-Based Exercise
Your staff and you will discuss hypothetical situations at a table-based discussion. Discussion-based tabletop exercises make an effective starting point since they don't require extensive preparation or resource allocation.
While such an exercise won't put your organization or its personnel in danger, it will still test how your team responds to real-life scenarios without placing their safety or that of their organization at risk - although such an activity cannot effectively address incident response strategies or team roles.
Simulation Exercise
Simulation tests offer your team an effective means of training them on responding in case of an incident through carefully choreographed walk-through exercises.
Simulated exercises allow your team to understand its incident response roles by showing how events unfold in reality.
Planning and organizing such simulations takes longer, yet they must put their abilities through rigorous scrutiny.
Parallel Testing
Parallel testing enables your team to put themselves through their paces as incident responders in a controlled setting.
Parallel testing gives your team the highest accuracy simulation and the best feedback on their roles and responsibilities.
However, parallel testing may be more expensive and time-consuming to arrange since it mimics real production environments more closely than other exercises.
Exercises On A Tabletop
Asking:
- Your incident response team received training on their roles.
- When was the last time you conducted a tabletop activity?
- Recent organizational changes could affect your incident response strategy.
- Recent guidance or legislation could impact your response strategy.
Make tabletop exercises focused on testing an incident response strategy critical component or section that interests you, along with any learning objectives or desired outcomes you set forth for it.
Develop an activity schedule, including details for the facilitator, participant participation, and data collector staff members involved (for your tabletop exercises).
Prepare the following information when designing your tabletop exercises:
- A facilitator's guide that documents the purpose, scope, objectives, and scenarios of your exercise, as well as a list of questions to meet your exercise's goals.
- The participant's briefing includes the agenda for the exercise and logistical information.
- The participant's guide contains the same information and questions as the facilitator's. However, it may only include some of the questions. Or, the list of questions is either shorter or omits some.
- An action report that documents evaluations, observations, and lessons from your tabletop exercises staff
Schedule a debriefing meeting after participating in a tabletop simulation to discuss its strengths and weaknesses with your team members to gain their input regarding any modifications you need to make to training or incident response strategies.
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Conclusion
If you still need to, a plan to deal with incidents has been put in place and reviewed regularly by you and the staff.
With regular simulations and tabletop exercises, employees could make good decisions with guidance and direction from management.
Data breaches can devastate an organization, yet they don't need to spell disaster for your brand. Adhering to your incident response strategy may prevent significant brand damage and mitigate significant brand dilution.Un intrusion must be detected quickly to allow enough time to identify its source and evaluate what has been compromised.
