A Complete Guide for 2025

Date: 17 July 2025

In 2025, cyber threats are everywhere and getting more sophisticated than ever. There’s simply no way to ensure that you are never attacked. But you can ensure that when your business is under siege, you take the right actions, make the right decisions and do all of it swiftly. The only way to do this? A robust Cyber Incident Response Plan and a well-rehearsed Incident Response strategy. 

Like every business today, yours too faces a complex web of vulnerabilities. That’s why you, too, need a well-tested, effective Incident Response Plan. But what should this plan contain? And how do you ensure that it indeed holds water in a real-world attack situation? Through meticulous planning and a deep understanding of the critical phases of incident response aligned with the NIST cybersecurity framework. 

In this cyber security blog, we delve deep into the 7 Phases of Incident Response that every business must integrate into their cyber resilience plan. We also explore the best ways to implement each of the 7 phases into your cybersecurity strategy. 

Phases of Incident Response

1. Preparation 
2. Identification 
3. Containment
4. Eradication
5. Recovery
6. Lessons Learned 
7. Communications 

1. Preparation: Building a Security-First Culture

The Preparation phase is all about being proactive. It is the foundation on which you have to build your organisation’s incident response. As the name suggests, this phase focuses on readiness—before an attack happens. Careful preparation reduces your attack surface and improves your detection ability. The end goal is to minimise the impact and recovery time from any cyber incident. But without preparation, this goal cannot be achieved. 

Key objectives in this phase include:

• Creating and formalising an Incident Response (IR) Plan: A Cybersecurity Incident Response Plan is a formal, documented strategy outlining how an organisation will detect and respond to cyber incidents. The IR plan must detail the protocols to follow in the event of an attack. It should also define roles and responsibilities of all personnel clearly.  Decision trees and escalation paths must be formulated in this phase.
• Assemble an Incident Response Team: In this phase, you must create an Incident Response Team. While cybersecurity is the concern of every employee, this team  is dedicated to handling and mitigating the impact of cybersecurity incidents. The team must have representation from IT, cybersecurity, legal, HR, PR, and executive leadership.
• Implement Security Tools and Measures: In this phase, it’s also important to deploy necessary security tools for managing cyber incidents. Implementing Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) systems to centralise log data and facilitate real-time threat detection is important. Advanced firewalls are essential to control network traffic and prevent unauthorised access. Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS) and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) should be strategically positioned to monitor network activity for malicious patterns and block suspicious connections. Comprehensive endpoint detection systems are vital for monitoring and protecting all devices connected to the network, from servers to user workstations, against a wide array of cyber threats.
• Conduct Employee Training and Cyber Tabletop Exercises: Employee training is a vital part of this phase. Cyber Management Alliance’s NCSC Assured Cyber Incident Planning and Response course is the definitive training to prepare all employees, but especially those at the forefront of managing incidents. This training not only equips participants to identify malicious activity and learn how to respond to it, it also dramatically enhances their awareness of the risks their businesses face.

  Certified training programmes must be complemented with regular cyber tabletop exercises. Cyber tabletop exercises simulate cybersecurity incidents in a controlled environment. Your team is forced to think and act like they would in a real incident, giving them critical decision making practice. These cyber attack drills also show how familiar key incident responders are with the incident response plan. Most importantly, they are a litmus test for your IR plans, revealing any gaps or misses that must be urgently fixed.  

2. Identification: Detecting and Confirming the Incident

This phase involves the process of recognising anomalies. How will your business confirm them as actual incidents? And how will the IR and Information Security team gather critical information about the attack? These key steps are covered in the Identification Phase of Cyber Incident Response. 

Remember, failure to detect an attack early can lead to exponential damage. Timely identification is key to reducing dwell time.

Key steps during the Identification Phase:

• Monitoring for Indicators of Compromise (IoCs) using threat intel feeds.
• Using machine learning-based behavioural analytics to detect insider threats or anomalous activity.
• Logging and timestamping the detection of suspicious events. 
• Determining affected systems.
• Classifying the incident type (e.g., malware, ransomware, data breach, DDoS).
• Assessing the scope and potential impact using incident classification matrices.

3. Containment: Stopping the Spread

Containment involves tactical decisions aimed at isolating the threat while maintaining operational continuity. A measured containment strategy balances limiting further damage and preserving forensic integrity for post-incident investigation.

The Containment Phase can be categorized as short-term and long-term. Below are the common steps undertaken in each phase. 

Short-Term Containment

• Immediately disconnect compromised systems from the network.
• Revoke access credentials for affected users or third-party accounts.
• Disable vulnerable services temporarily.

Long-Term Containment

• Redirect traffic through secure proxies and segmented networks.
• Deploy software patches and forensic agents.
• Document containment steps for future audits and learning. 

4. Eradication: Eliminating the Root Cause

As the name suggests, the Eradication Phase of Cybersecurity Incident Response aims to completely remove all elements of the attack from your infrastructure. Eradication should be led by experienced analysts. It must be backed by forensic investigations and root cause analysis (RCA) to ensure no residual risk remains.

Steps in the eradication process:

• Remove malware or ransomware payloads and clean the affected endpoints.
• Investigate and close exploited vulnerabilities.
• Rebuild corrupted or manipulated systems.
• Update firewall rules and DNS filtering policies.
• Remove unauthorised admin accounts and tools left behind by threat actors. 

5. Recovery: Restoring Normal Operations

Once the threat is eradicated, the focus shifts to bringing affected systems back online safely and efficiently. Recovery should be gradual and methodical—rushing this phase can risk reintroducing the threat.

Develop a carefully structured recovery plan that prioritises critical business functions and ensures each restored system is free of compromise. Begin by restoring data and applications from verified, clean backups, following a clearly defined sequence to prevent the spread of latent threats. 

Important considerations in the Recovery Phase:

• Restore from clean, verified backups.
• Monitor systems closely for signs of reinfection or persistence mechanisms.
• Conduct penetration testing and security validation before full restoration.
• Inform all stakeholders and, if applicable, regulatory bodies about resolution.

6. Lessons Learned: Institutionalising Experience

This is the most underutilised yet powerful phase. Lessons learned convert a damaging incident into an opportunity for growth and resilience. Involving cross-functional teams in this exercise enhances preparedness across all business units.

This comprehensive analysis should ideally be conducted within 14 days of the complete recovery from an incident. In this phase, you should create a meticulous timeline of events, detailing every significant action, decision made, and their corresponding impact. 

A thorough analysis should also be performed to identify what aspects of the response worked effectively and what areas require improvement. This includes evaluating the speed of the response. Assess the clarity and effectiveness of internal and external communication.

Were the escalation protocols effective? Were stakeholders informed promptly? Was the chain of command clear? Were resources allocated efficiently? These are some of the key questions to ask in this phase. 

Based on these findings, make necessary updates to the Incident Response Plan. This might involve refining existing procedures, adding new steps, or removing obsolete ones. Security tools and technologies should also be re-evaluated and adjusted based on the findings in this phase.  

7. Communication

While not an official phase in the NIST framework, we have added it here because of its criticality in the age of information. Where news stories go viral in seconds and leadership statements are dissected to shreds, it’s important to understand that communication is the glue that binds incident response together.

Effective incident communication is crucial for crisis management. Clear, accurate, and timely communications maintain trust with customers and shareholders. This also helps you meet regulatory obligations. 

Key communication protocols include:

• Internal Communication: Keep all staff, executives, leaders, and stakeholders informed. This prevents misinformation and panic. Ensure a unified response and maintain morale.
• External Communication: Manage media relations with a single spokesperson. Communicate empathetically with customers and clients. Be sure to inform partners and vendors. Do address the broader public if applicable. This will help you better manage perception and protect your reputation during a cyber attack. 
• Regulatory Communication: Fulfill legal and ethical obligations by notifying data protection authorities in time. Financial regulators and/or sector-specific regulators should also be informed where applicable. This will not only help you avoid penalties, it also demonstrates accountability.

All communications must adhere to the principles of transparency, accuracy, and timeliness to prevent speculation. 

Closing Thoughts

Whether you’re a CISO, IT manager, compliance officer, or business leader, mastering the 7 phases of incident response is not just about compliance. It’s about protecting your business, reputation, and bottom line.

Implementing this lifecycle requires strategic investment in tools, training, people, and practice. The support of an external expert such as Cyber Management Alliance ensures your response is robust, battle-tested, and aligned with global best practices.

Cyber incidents are inevitable. But being unprepared is a choice. Make yours today!