What is Incident Response?

According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a cybersecurity strategy contains at least five key functions. It should:

• Identify risks and threats
• Protect using the right safeguards
• Detect cyber incidents early
• Respond with effective incident management
• Recover from any resulting loss

The “respond” part matters, if not more. Losses are inevitable in a cyberattack, no matter how well your system has thwarted it. As such, businesses should have a Plan B in case attackers get away with some or most of their data. This is known as an incident response process, and it can mean life or death for a company.

Minimizing The Damage

These days, it’s dangerous to think that your critical systems can be made impervious to threats. For starters, the rapid pace at which cybercriminals develop new attack methods is frightening. In just almost half a century, security breaches have come a long way from mere malware to those that rely on human naivete to work.

Sadly, technological innovations breed as many new problems as they do solutions, if not more. As examples such as AI and quantum computing become more commonplace, hackers embrace them as much as their victims. Even if you were to go off the grid, hackers can still develop crafty approaches to tricking you into giving them your credentials.

The defending team can’t always identify such attempts, let alone thwart them effectively. When they strike, an effective incident response plan aims to limit the damage they can do to business operations. Less damage means less interruption in business continuity and faster recovery.

An incident response framework implemented by a dedicated cybersecurity incident response team can help businesses save around 30% of the average cost of unhindered data breaches. It also speeds up the time to identify and contain the threat by at least a third.

Incident Response Life Cycle

A threat to your infrastructure doesn’t end with its containment or eradication, but rather a warning of more similar or new threats to come in the future. As such, the NIST formulated the incident response methodology to be a cycle instead of a linear process, consisting of four fundamental phases.

Preparation

The preparation phase is self-explanatory: readying all the hardware and software necessary to enact incident response efforts. For example, signing up for a free push notifications service is crucial for achieving quick response times. Coupled with mobile devices, a notification service will be nothing short of invaluable in the larger system.

NIST encourages the preparation of so-called “jump kits,” which typically consist of a laptop with the necessary software installed, media devices, and networking equipment. It also recommends using a separate laptop for producing reports to higher-ups and other activities not directly involved in incident response tasks.

Detection and Analysis

The steps in this phase wildly vary by attack, so preparing a one-size-fits-all process is almost impossible. That said, businesses must prepare a detection and analysis mechanism for the most common vectors, from physical media (e.g., USB/external hard drives) to impersonation by unauthorized personnel.

Confirming cybersecurity incidents is up to the incident response team’s judgment. Collaborating with other teams can help it be more certain about its initial findings or learn new information.

Containment, Eradication, and Recovery (CER)

Once a potential threat is finally verified as an actual one, incident response teams must move in and contain it as fast as possible. This way, the team can prevent the threat from inflicting further damage to operations. Containment methods include shutting down the affected terminal or disconnecting it from the internal network.

Eradication involves removing the threat and disabling affected accounts, among other tasks. This step usually occurs after enough information about the security event—namely, the backdoor used to access the network—has been gathered.

As soon as the threat is gone, the process of returning to normal operations starts. Backups are critical for this part of the cybersecurity incident response plan, as rebuilding all lost capabilities and data from scratch wastes resources and time. Recovery time can take weeks or months, depending on how much was lost in the security breach.

Most responses tend to perform another round of detection and analysis to ensure the system is clean and working. In fact, these two steps form their own cycle.

Post-Incident Activity

As the detection-CER sub-cycle continues, the team complies data on the incident into a report and archives it for reference. It’s important for cyber incident response team members to meet to discuss what they can learn from the incident. New insights learned can be used to better prepare for future incidents and enhance the overall security posture.

Conclusion

Managing cybersecurity is less of a hassle if businesses accept the fact that a data breach will occur in their systems soon. It motivates them to plan in a timely manner to mitigate the damage hackers can do to their operations. A strategic approach to incident response planning is key.