However, even major breaches can be dealt with effectively when the affected organization has a formal incident response plan, making it one of your most important risk management solutions. Here are four key components of every good incident response plan.
Essential #1: Understand the full scope of the breach before responding
Once a cybersecurity breach is detected, it can be easy for organizations to resolve the immediately visible issue, then simply move on. Organizations often don’t effectively investigate the endpoints of the breach, or even what other systems may have been impacted. This makes it impossible to truly understand the scope of the breach, which is critical to formulating an effective response, and ensuring that your network is truly secure once the incident is resolved.
Essential #2: Involve your legal team immediately
Most security incidents don’t have legal repercussions, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea to always seek legal advice when dealing with potentially sensitive information. While most breaches don’t require a legal response, it’s always a possibility, so it’s better to remain safe than sorry.
Essential #3: Ensure you’re communicating effectively and responsibly
Effective communication is crucial when it comes to how your organization is perceived by the outside world. If you release information that later turns out to be untrue, or fail to release information that should have been disseminated, it can look from the outside like your organization doesn’t have control of the situation.
Accordingly, it’s important to have a formal post-incident communication plan that lays out explicitly who’s responsible for conveying information, especially to those you’re legally obliged to notify, like anybody whose personal data was compromised.
Accordingly, it’s important to have a formal post-incident communication plan that lays out explicitly who’s responsible for conveying information, especially to those you’re legally obliged to notify, like anybody whose personal data was compromised.
Essential #4: Have a properly staffed response team
The results of any post-breach investigation are only as good as the expertise of those performing it. You need to make sure you have the right people investigating the incident, and the team as a whole should have a comprehensive mix of deep technical and IT knowledge, legal knowledge and human resources information. Make sure you have your team, outside resources, and plan in place before the breach that identifies what situation calls for what type of expertise.
By crafting an effective incident response plan, you can ensure that your company is always prepared to deal with the unexpected and prepare for future cybersecurity concerns.
By crafting an effective incident response plan, you can ensure that your company is always prepared to deal with the unexpected and prepare for future cybersecurity concerns.
Contact Vala Secure to find out how your organization can improve its incident response plan.
