What is Cyber Security incident management?

Security incident management is the procedure of recognizing, handling, recording and scrutinizing security threats or events in real-time. It aims to give a strong and all-inclusive understanding of any security issues within an IT setup. A security event can be an active threat or a tried interference to an effective compromise or data breach. Policy breaches and unlawful access to data such as health, fiscal, social security numbers, and personally identifiable accounts are all instances of security incidents.

How Security Management Functions

While incident response measures can differ relying on the organization and relevant business purposes, there are common steps that are regularly taken to deal with threats. The primary step may begin with a full inquiry of an irregular system or anomaly within system, data, or user behavior.

For instance, a security incident team is likely to recognize a server that is working more slowly than usual. The team will, then, evaluate the problem to ascertain whether a security incident has triggered this situation. If that turns out to be the case, then the event will be examined further, and data will be collected and chronicled to determine the scope of the event and measures needed for resolution. A comprehensive report is penned of the security incident. Law enforcement agencies may also be involved if need arises. If the event includes exposure or theft of important customer accounts, then a public announcement may be made by involving the top management and a public relations team.

Why You Need an Incident Response Plan

Having an incident response plan in place is an important part of an effective security program. Its objective is to create and test clear steps that an organization could and ought to take to decrease the effect of a hole from external and internal threats.

Granted that it’s not possible to prevent every attack, an organization’s incident response posture should stress anticipation, dexterity, and adaptation, says James Anderson, a security expert.

Anderson says that it’s possible to reduce or shun damage with an effective IR program. He adds: “Enterprise planning and systems engineering must be based on the postulation that systems or mechanisms have either been affected or contain undiscovered susceptibilities that could lead to unnoticed compromises. Moreover, assignments and business functions must last to run in the presence of compromise.”

The competences of an incident response program are often evaluated on the level of an organization’s maturity, which underlines the organization’s proactive attitude. Businesses that are able to chart policies to the level of risk suitable to the business are better equipped to handle a security incident.

By way of example, Anderson elucidates that the objective for a small company should be to get to a level of repeatable procedure, which entails having a sustained plan, tangible roles and responsibilities, lines of communication, and recognized response measures. These are the essential stepping stones that would allow it to suitably address the volume of incidents it is likely to experience.

“Nevertheless, for organizations with highly treasured information with a high-risk level, a formal strategy is not sufficient, and they need to be much more intelligence-oriented and practical in threat-hunting abilities,” Anderson says.

Phases of Incident Response

An incident response plan should be established to address an alleged data breach in a string of phases. The incident response phases are:

1. Preparation

This phase is key to your incident response planning, and the most vital phase to guard your business. The preparation phase makes sure your employees are appropriately trained about their incident response obligations if the data breach hits their company. Moreover, it aims to create incident response drill situations and frequently carry out simulated data breaks to assess your incident response strategy.

Your response strategy should be well-chronicled, meticulously explaining everyone’s roles and tasks. Then the strategy must be verified in order to guarantee that your employees will do as they were trained. Your employees are less likely to make critical mistakes if they are well trained. The more prepared your employees are, the less likely they’ll make critical mistakes.

2. Identification

This is the procedure where you find out whether you have been violated. A break, or event, could initiate from many diverse areas. You should be able to identify when the event occurred, how it was discovered, and if any other fields have been affected.

3. Containment

When a break is first exposed, your early instinct may be to firmly eliminate everything so you can just do away with it. Nevertheless, that will likely upset you in the long term since you’ll be destroying important evidence that you need to ascertain where the break began and develop a plan to prevent it from recurring. Instead, control the break so it doesn’t spread and cause further harm to your company. If you can, disengage impacted devices from the Internet, and have short- and long-term control plans ready. Having a redundant system backup to help reinstate business operations is also important as no data is forever lost this way.

4. Eradication

Once you’ve fixed the problem, you should discover and remove the root cause of the break. This implies all malware should be safely detached, systems should again be toughened and repaired, and updates should be applied. Whether you do this on your own, or hire someone else to do it, you need to be exhaustive. If any trace of malware or security problems remain in your systems, you may still lose important data, and your liability could surge.

5. Recovery

This is the procedure of reestablishing and returning impacted systems and devices back into your business setting. During this time, it’s significant to get your systems and business processes up and running again without getting worried about another breach.

6. Lessons Learned

Once the probe is done, organize an after-action meeting with all IR team members and deliberate what you’ve learned from the data break. This is where you will examine and chronicle everything about the break. Find out what worked well in your response strategy, and where there were some loopholes. The lessons learned from both simulated and real incidents will help strengthen your systems against the future attacks.

Conclusion

Are you ready to counter an attack? What plans do you have in place should you or your organization get hacked? If you get to know that you’ve been hacked through a third party, such as your bank, an intelligence agency, or the media, your organization is in for a lot of trouble. Just sitting back and hoping it won’t recur isn’t enough. The advancement in technology has made many businesses prepare for an expected breach or attack.

Developing and executing an incident response plan will help your company deal with a data breach swiftly, competently, and with minimal harm done.