Cyber Incident Response Planning is critical for businesses concerned about cybersecurity. There is no prevention of cyber crime anymore. The only protection is preparation. But what are the key 7 phases of cyber incident response? And how do you ensure that your cyber incident response plan covers all these phases effectively? That’s what we are about to explore in this blog.
Sensitive data and confidential information are the new gold in the digital age. And cyber criminals are naturally always in pursuit of this goldmine. And since it’s only a matter of time before a business is attacked, it would be wise to be prepared with a solid incident response plan. But what does an incident response plan really consist of and what are the key 7 cyber incident response phases? Let’s explore the main phases in a robust incident response plan as per NIST’s computer security incident handling guide.
What is a Cyber Incident Response Plan?
Before we delve into what the 7 incident response phases are, let’s discuss Incident Response Planning.
A Cybersecurity Response Plan, put simply, is a plan of action that your business will implement when a security event occurs. It should ideally be a crisp, brief, to-the-point document. It should detail the steps to be taken by the incident response team (IR team) and the information security team when a ransomware attack or a cyber-attack does occur.
The plan should also enlist the roles and responsibilities of everyone in the executive team and management involved in the incident handling process.
What has to be done with the affected user accounts and the affected systems after security breaches? What chain of communication has to be followed? Who has to be informed when, how and by whom? Do the law enforcement agencies have to be contacted and if yes, when?
All these questions pertaining to immediate incident management should be covered in the response plan.
You can take a look at our FREE Incident Response Plan Template to start building out your own incident response plan.
What are the 7 Phases of Cyber Incident Response?
As per the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an incident response plan has 4 main phases. However, many cybersecurity experts break this down into a more comprehensive 7 phases of incident response. So let’s take a look at what these 7 steps are:
1. Preparation: This phase of the incident response plan comes before the incident or data breach even takes place. It is the ultimate step that can make or break your response to cybersecurity events.
The preparation stage of Incident Response Planning takes into account that the business is highly likely to be attacked sooner or later. It is meant to ready the organisation for future incidents.
The primary components of this phase are:
- Risk assessment
- Evaluating where the maximum vulnerabilities lie
- Which assets are most likely to be attacked
- What impact will an attack on these assets have on business operations
- Defining clear channels of communication
- Establishing which response checklists will be followed
- Making sure business continuity plans are in place etc.
- Offering cybersecurity training for executives and employees
2. Identification: This phase is all about identifying the incident. Cybersecurity incidents include data breach, ransomware attack, DDoS attack or any suspected malicious activity. Identifying the breach in the ‘Golden Hour’ is critical to ensuring the cybersecurity emergency doesn’t spiral out of control.
This phase starts with assessing if the event is really a cyber-attack. If yes, how intense is it? Filtering out false positives makes up a big part of this phase.
Next, it’s important to ask questions about which parts of the business have been affected. Understanding the specific harm the incident is causing is crucial.
This phase also involves categorising the cybersecurity incident based on the type of attack. Here are some key points to consider:
- Identify which business areas or systems have been compromised.
- Determine the extent and nature of the damage caused by the incident.
- Classify the incident according to the type of cyber attack it represents.
3. Containing the situation: Managing the impact of a cyber attack is a crucial step in responding to incidents. It’s important to have a plan ready to prevent the situation from getting worse. Simply deleting everything isn’t a good idea because it might erase important evidence.
- Consider both short-term and long-term strategies to handle the situation effectively.
- Decide which systems need to be temporarily shut down if a breach occurs.
- Ensure there are backup processes in place to support recovery efforts.
4. Eradication: This step in incident response focuses on getting rid of the cause of the security breach. After you have managed to control the situation and identified the main source of the problem, it’s important to find a way to completely remove it.
- Make sure to remove any harmful software or malware that might be causing the issue.
- Fix any weaknesses in your system by updating and patching old software versions.
- Ensure that all security measures are up-to-date to prevent future breaches.
5. Recovery: Once the vulnerabilities have been patched and malware has been eliminated, the recovery or restoration phase becomes the focal point.
This crucial step is dedicated to:
- Ensuring that all affected systems are operational and security patches have been applied.
- Making sure affected systems are also fortified against future threats.
- Restoring normalcy to business operations as swiftly and efficiently as possible.
- Reviewing system logs and performance metrics to detect any anomalies that might indicate lingering issues.
- Verifying that all software updates have been implemented
- Removing any temporary measures put in place during the containment phase or replacing them with permanent solutions.
This phase should include a comprehensive assessment of the recovery process itself. It must focus on identifying any areas for improvement to enhance future response efforts. By ensuring that systems are robustly patched and continuously monitored, you can significantly reduce the risk of recurrence and maintain the integrity of operations.
6. Lessons Learned: Reflecting on an incident is one of the most important parts of planning how to respond to future incidents. This is often called ‘Post Incident’ actions. During this phase, you should:
- Look back at what happened and how it was managed.
- Check if the response plans were effective.
- Evaluate if all key decision-makers and stakeholders acted quickly and accurately.
If you need to make any changes to your incident response plan, this is the right time to do it. You can use our Cyber Incident Response Plan Template to ensure your plan includes all the essential elements of a strong response.
Additionally, many organisations choose to involve external experts or cybersecurity advisors at this stage. They can help review and improve your incident response strategies for the future.
7. Test to Build Muscle Memory: Congrats, you managed to survive a grave security incident. But don’t waste too much time celebrating. Your hackers are not going to back down. In fact at this very moment, they’re probably planning how to strike back again and strike harder.
This is why you need to continually test and rehearse your incident response plans and try and find any loopholes or gaps in them that criminals may try to exploit next.
There is no time to rest in the cybersecurity cat-and-mouse race so unfortunately you can’t really take a break. You need to start testing whatever changes you may have recently made to your incident response plans in this phase.
You can check out our Cyber Crisis Tabletop Exercises or the specific Ransomware Tabletop Exercises to truly shred apart your plans and see if they’ll really hold water next time or not.
To know more about how you can prepare your employees better for a cyber-attack, check out our NCSC-Certified Cyber Incident Planning & Response Course.
If you would like to test your cyber incident response plans for effectiveness, check out our scenario-based cyber tabletop exercises.
