How to Craft an Effective Incident Response Plan (IRP)

That’s why having a robust incident response plan (IRP) is not only advisable – it’s essential.

It’s impossible to be prepared for every potential issue that exists, but an effective IRP can help mitigate risks and swiftly return to normal operations.

Read: What is a Disaster Recovery Plan?

What is an Incident Response Plan?

An IRP is a structured approach that outlines the actionable steps to take when a cyber incident occurs, whether that’s a data breach, cyber attack or outage. It serves as a roadmap for how a company will use tools and procedures to prepare for, detect, respond to, mitigate and recover from these incidents. It also clarifies clear roles and responsibilities, so your team can respond quickly and minimize damage or disruptions.

Benefits of Implementing an Incident Response Plan

With 60 percent of businesses closing within six months of a cyber attack, you would think companies would put IRP at the top of the list, but you would be wrong; 77% of businesses reported they don’t have an IRP in place, leaving them exposed to potential cyber events.

The companies that do implement an effective IRP face numerous benefits:

• Mitigate damage and costs: The IRP helps stop business operations from being further interrupted, leading to lost revenue and productivity.
• Effective response: With an IRP, your company can respond quickly and efficiently, limiting the severity of the attack.
• Ensure compliance: IRPs ensure you meet compliance with stringent regulations so you don’t get hit with fines or penalties.
• Maintain trust and reputation: With an IRP, you can maintain trust with customers, partners, stakeholders and others. An effective IRP also demonstrates the company’s commitment to security and privacy.
• Strengthen your cybersecurity: An IRP can strengthen your overall cybersecurity posture, ensuring the protection of data and critical assets.

Key Components of an Effective Incident Response Plan

Five essential components compromise an effective IRP: preparation, detection and analysis, containment and eradication, recovery and post-incident analysis.

• Preparation: This phase involves establishing the foundation for effective incident response. If possible, create an IRP for different cyber incidents. First, identify which critical assets your company handles (networks, servers and endpoints) to determine which ones hold sensitive data. Ask yourself what would happen if the data was stolen or damaged. From there, conduct a risk assessment to prioritize security issues – is your company more at risk of malware or phishing? Which one will have a higher chance of affecting sensitive data? Next, assemble your incident response team. Cyber attacks affect multiple facets of a company, so you should have stakeholders from IT, management, legal, human relations, public relations, customer service and finance. Define their roles and responsibilities in the IRP so they know how to restore operations ASAP. Finally, create a communication plan with contact information for all internal and external incident responders, including partners, vendors, legal counsel, the press, law enforcement and customers. Clarify who should be informed of the cyber incident, what communication channels should be used and the deadline to report the incident.
• Detection and analysis: This component covers the company’s ability to detect and analyze security incidents quickly. Ensure you have the proper infrastructure, security tools and alert mechanisms to detect cyber incidents, or you won’t be able to determine how the cyber criminal accessed your system, preventing future attacks. These tools can include firewalls, antimalware and antivirus software, SIEM, intrusion and detection systems and more that collect data and indicators signaling that an incident is about to happen or is currently happening, as well as the type of cyber event and its severity. From there, your company can determine what actions are needed based on how much sensitive data was affected and what your company needs to restore business operations.
• Containment and eradication: Once an incident is confirmed, efforts must be made to contain its spread to prevent further damage and eliminate the root cause to stop future attacks. The incident response team should first identify the affected accounts, devices and systems so the team can then shut down, disconnect or isolate them. From there, the team should consider the severity and type of incident; the amount of damage done; the criticality of the affected assets; the need to collect evidence; the need to keep critical services available; and the time it will take to restore everything. For the eradication part, the team should focus on removing the threat so they can restore systems to normal. This can include installing security patches and updates.
• Recovery: After the incident has been contained and removed, the focus shifts to restoring normal operations to their pre-incident state. This includes restoring data from uncorrupted backups and implementing additional security controls to ensure the event doesn’t happen again. You might even need to rebuild systems from scratch if they are damaged beyond repair. Consider updating all passwords to something complex and strong.
• Post-incident analysis: Following the resolution of an incident, it’s essential to conduct a thorough analysis. This is the time to identify weaknesses in the company’s IRP and areas for improvement so your company can reduce the likelihood of other cyber events happening in the future. Gather everyone involved and discuss what happened, how your team handled the incident, what worked, what didn’t and what could be improved. Consider new indicators, tools and resources that are needed. This feedback loop is critical for incorporating “lessons learned,” refining the IRP and enhancing overall cybersecurity resilience. Share these findings with the senior leaders and stakeholders.

Best Practices for Creating an Incident Response Plan

1. Involve stakeholders: Collaboration is key in developing a comprehensive IRP. Involve stakeholders from across the organization, especially those who will be on your incident response team.
2. Tailor to your business: Every company is different and has its own set of assets, risks and regulatory requirements. Customize your IRP to address the needs and challenges of your organization.
3. Test regularly: An IRP is only effective if it’s been tested and validated; waiting until an incident occurs can leave your company vulnerable and ill-prepared. Conduct regular tabletop exercises and simulated incident scenarios to identify gaps, validate procedures and train staff on their roles and responsibilities. Test detection tools to see if they can accurately detect an event.
4. Stay agile: The threat landscape is constantly evolving, so it’s essential to regularly review and update your IRP to reflect new changes, technologies and expert recommendations.
5. Communicate effectively: Clear and timely communication is essential during a security incident. Establish communication channels and protocols in advance to ensure all stakeholders know how to report incidents and review updates to the IRP. Establish clear guidelines on informing affected parties inside and outside the company, including law enforcement, the press and customers.
6. Keep the IRP clear and simple: The best IRPs are the ones that are easy to understand and follow. Don’t fill it with technical jargon; keep details, procedures and explanations to a minimum. Also, keep everything in a centralized location so the team isn’t using multiple tools and processes in different places.

How Thriveon Can Help

Preparation is key to building an effective IRP. Start building your plan today to be ready for when the next cyber event arises.

However, crafting an effective IRP can be tricky, especially if you don’t know where to start. If that’s the case, consider working with Thriveon. We provide robust managed IT, cybersecurity and IT planning services so our clients have the best chance of thwarting cyber incidents.

Schedule a meeting with us now.