Effective cyber security requires any business today to be prepared for something to go wrong. Having an incident response plan in place ensures that, if something does happen, your team can swing into action and mitigate any damage. Teams that integrate an incident response plan can save not only capital, but most importantly your company reputation and your customers’ trust.

Six steps for your businesses cyber security

A cyber incident response plan is, essentially, a document that outlines what needs to happen if there is a security breach or cyber security incident. We’ve broken down six key stages involved in this type of planning:

1. Preparation

This is what needs to happen before any incident can take place. It should bring together cyber security policies, data protection and security objectives as well as the tech tools that your organisation is going to use to mitigate any issues that arise. Security awareness training is a key part of this.

2. Identification

When a cyber security breach happens, mitigating it will depend on how quickly it is identified. So, this step is all about what will be involved in identifying that systems have been compromised. It will include asking questions, such as who identified the breach, how big is the breach and what systems are involved.

3. Containment steps

Quick action means limiting the damage that can be done by something like a cyber security breach as quickly as possible. So, it’s vital to plan for immediate containment steps. This will depend on the nature of the breach but could include taking systems offline or removing a hacker from the network. These are the immediate steps that need to happen to stop the incident from escalating.

4. Removing the threat

Again, this will depend on exactly what has happened but it’s all about looking at what is happening within your systems in the event of a breach and what the weakness was that allowed the breach to occur. For example, if the breach is malware infecting your network then this step will be about isolating that malware and then removing it.

5. Recovering from the incident

Initially, this part of the plan should focus on what needs to be done right now in order to get systems back up and running again. What are the basics that are required for you to be operational? In the longer term it will also involve testing and monitoring affected systems and putting new processes in place to prevent the same cyber security incident occurring in the future.

6. Review

The final step in incident response planning is factoring in time to reflect and review what happened – to ensure that it doesn’t happen again. It’s also about evaluating how well the plan worked so that you know whether you have a robust incident response – or whether there are tweaks that need to be made.

A cyber secure solution

Cyber security incident response planning is essential for every organisation today. If you don’t know where to start, or if you’re looking for a cyber security partner – CyberHive can help. Our tailored, expert solutions that fit your budget without compromising on security. Get in touch today and we can discuss how to fortify your business.