Did you know that fewer than half of American small businesses consider cybersecurity a threat to their company? This means many businesses don’t have an adequate cyber incident response. Given the devastating impact a cyber attack could have on your organization, you can’t afford not to have a plan of action.
So what exactly should a cyber incident response involve? This article tells you the basics of how to formulate your plan.
Create an Incident Response Team
A cybersecurity response team is one of the most important things you’ll need if you want to respond to all security incident types effectively. This team should be diverse and have clearly defined roles and responsibilities. Everyone should know exactly what they’re responsible for. Confusion about responsibility can have fatal consequences during a cyber incident, so always make sure you know who is in charge of what.
Prioritize Your Assets
Cybersecurity systems are incredibly complex, so it doesn’t make sense to try and protect every aspect of your system. Instead, it would be best if you used your expert team to review your organization’s digital assets on systems thoroughly. This enables you to only focus your resources on the assets that are the most important to running your company.
Have an Incident Response Plan
Once you deeply understand your critical assets, your team is ready to develop the cybersecurity incident response plan. The priority should be eliminating cyber threats and getting your systems back up and running. Make sure you have clearly defined roles and communication protocols and know exactly who the main stakeholders are.
You should also know that most security incident types go beyond your digital systems. You’ll also need to consider things like reputation management and crisis communication. This is why your team shouldn’t only consist of IT experts. It would be best if you also had people on board who are skilled in public relations.
Test the Plan
One of the big mistakes that companies often make is that they don’t test out their response plan. You’ll need to do rigorous testing to ensure your plan doesn’t fall apart during an incident. For example, you might run a simulated cyber attack. This can help you to identify potential weaknesses or gaps in your planning.
Create a Security Culture
Many companies fall into the trap of thinking because they have a plan for a business data breach that they’re secure. The reality is that securing your organization is a constant process. It’s not enough to have a plan; you also need to develop a consistent and robust security culture.
In a security culture, every employee takes security seriously and always reports any security threats. Creating such a culture takes time; you can only accomplish it through training and awareness.
Cyber Incident Response Is Essential
Given the risks of a cyber attack, you can’t afford to not have a planned cyber incident response. You’ll need to assemble a diverse team and test your plan to make sure your organization has what it takes to stay resilient.
Of course, creating such a plan can be quite complex. It often makes sense to work with a professional IT company to help you formulate your response. Contact us today, and we can help keep your company secure.
