How to Turn Your Cyber Incident Response (Plans from Blah) into Fantastic?

Let us face it. A cyber incident could happen to any organization that has a computer system that is connected to the Net. Well, the next question is, does such an organization exist? Almost no organization in today’s world, no matter of what size and which part of the world it could be in, can function without a cyber system. So, this means that simply any organization is vulnerable to a cyberattack and every organization should have a cyber incident response plan in place.

The simplest way to understand a cyber incident response plan is to understand it as a measure aimed at preventing cyberattacks. It is what may be defined as set of steps and measures aimed at countering cyberattacks or any other kind of security breach and reducing the damage to the extent possible. Ideally, a solid cyber response incident plan should put in place measures that will ensure that attacks do not happen in future, but this is too optimistic and ambitious, because it is almost certain that no two cyberattacks are the same.

So, what are the ways of how to turn your cyber incident response plans from blah into fantastic? Let us examine a few of these:

Understand the nature of the threat and how to deal with it

The first approach to how to turn your cyber incident response plans from blah into fantastic is to understand the nature of the threats. The essence of a cyber incident response plan should be one of realism, which is that even with all the care in the world, it is never possible to have an impregnable cyber incident response plan. A look at this bit of statistics from the Ponemon Institute is insightful:

The average cost of a data breach globally is in the range of $4million, and the recovery time, around very close to two-and-a-half months. While this is the global average, this research shows that companies that attained a response time of one month were able to cut the costs of a breach by as much as a quarter, i.e., almost a million dollars. Yet, it is not known if a data breach can be totally halted. So, at best, a robust plan should have enough ability at restricting the damage, help curtail the costs attached to an attack, and to bring down the time for recovery.

The next step in how to turn your cyber incident response plans from blah into fantastic will consist of forming a cyber response team. That this is a crucial step is obvious, because in no organization, however small, can one person be in charge of cyber response. A team with the right mix of experience and expertise should be formed to analyze the root causes as well as the immediate ones in the breach.

Analyze

Thoroughly analyzing a cyber incident plan is the next step in how to turn your cyber incident response plans from blah into fantastic. Naturally, the purpose of the team should be to get down to the bottom of the issue and analyze why the security systems failed and what made the breach possible. This will help it to track the issue down and help it take remedial measures.

Make the response versatile

Yes, how to turn your cyber incident response plans from blah into fantastic also means that your response should be intuitive and smart and never set in stone. Why is this so? Simply because as I mentioned above, no two incidents are of the same nature or gravity. So, your response should be take each incident on its face value and treat it for what it is-unique-and prepare a plan that takes the unique nature of each attack.

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