Curtail Business Disruption With A Proactive Incident Response Strategies
No one wants to consider what happens in the event of a devastating attack or natural disaster, but proactive incident response planning may be what saves your business from disaster.
A fully-formed incident response plan contains 6 unique phases, each of which are targeted to help your corporation survive and thrive after a data breach or other cybersecurity incident. This is a living document and one that should be updated on a fairly regular basis to ensure it still covers the key requirements of your customers and business. Most companies test their incident response plans on an annual basis and identify specific individuals who must be available 24/7 to respond to incidents, or you are dramatically increasing the risk to your organization. See how the professionals at Spade Technology can come alongside your IT team to define strategies that will help protect and quickly repair any damage to your organization.
Stages Of Incident Response Planning
A great deal of research and preparation goes into your incident response plan, making this first phase one of the most important. The Preparation phase includes everything from employee training and documentation of drill scenarios to obtaining funding for incident response testing and execution. During the Identification phase, you’ll address specific questions around the breach, such as defining the scope of the compromise, documenting details around the event and how it was discovered and how it ultimately affects operations.
Containing The Damage And Beginning To Restore Operations
With the Containment phase, your team will leap into action to ensure that you limiting the impact to the remaining business units and external customers. Containment requires both short- and long-term strategies to access backups, cleanse malware from the system and apply any outstanding security updates. When you reach Phase 4: Eradication, you begin digging deeper into your systems to ferret out any lingering malware or aftereffects of the attack. Servers are restored, hardened, and patched, which leads you to the Recovery phase. During Recovery, the goal is to restore systems to their normal operating values from a trusted backup. Shifting assets back to production servers after testing and triggering advanced monitoring solutions helps reduce the possibility of re-infection.
Gaining Perspective
The final stage of your incident response strategy involves a retrospective of the lessons learned from your activities. Are there specific options such as additional training or more aggressive security procedures that may have prevented the attack? Were there other vulnerabilities identified during the activities? Gaining a deeper understanding of why an attack could take hold can help protect your organization in the future.
It isn’t unusual to become paralyzed trying to wrap your mind around the scope of any proposed incident response strategy. Starting with a reasonable scope and building upon your plan over time allows you to make strides forward without undue stress on the organization. When you need assistance with defining or revising your incident response plan, contact the professionals at Spade Technology at (508) 339-5163 to schedule your no-obligation initial consultation. Our teams help New England corporations define and execute the right IT solutions to drive ongoing business growth and operational excellence. Spade Technology provides reliable, trusted support with a focus firmly on efficiency to reduce costs and boost revenue for your business.
